CUPS & Foomatic

[mbertrand]

How can I support the most printers. I'm using CUPS with Foomatic. I had recently plugged in an HP printer that had no PPD file found anywhere but when adding via CUPS web interface a PPD was generated and using the generated one worked. Who is generating this PPD? Foomatic? CUPS? I'm trying to have support for as many printers I can but at the same time keep the size of TinyCore as small as possible. I don't need all the extra features of any printer just basic printing. Maybe I don't need to ad HPLIP and/or GutenPrint?

I know that outside of TinyCore  if you dowload Foomatic it comes as a set of 4 programs (foomatic-filters, foomatic-db-engine, foomatic-db and foomatic-db-nonfree) but the TinyCore only has Foomatic-RIP.  So how is this PPD getting generated?

[Juanito]

I think I remember reading that most hp laserjet printers would work with the basic laserjet-5 ppd and most hp deskjet/officejet printers would work with the basic deskjet-930(?) ppd.

Doesn't cups autogenerate at least some ppd without needing foomatic?

[mbertrand]

This is what I'm trying to determine. I know that the ppd file was generated but I don't know if it's cups or Foomatic. I currently have a printer that I know as no ppd file found anywhere so I will star with just CUPS with no Foomatic and see how all this is working. I would have liked to have found some docs on the net that explains the mechanism regarding CUPS but have not found anything clear for me. I'm also comparing with my Ubuntu desktop and I can see that it has a list of all ppd files in a compressed format and this is shown in the list of available printers to choose from when installing a new printer. I will keep looking !