I use Turboprint for an older Canon i550 and and also have on hand a Brother HL-2030 that Turboprint does not support. Brother supports it with its own cupswrapper and LPR/LPD driver which comes up on USB2, and uses CUPS just as Turboprint does.

I have had the Canon i550 running under Turboprint for years and also wish to install the Brother. Has anyone ever installed two different printer drivers which are from two different sources which use the CUPS interface and are set up at the same time?

You can set up certain printers by merely using the CUPS PPDs inside of CUPS for the specific printers with no problem But, will CUPS allow two other different sources to work within CUPS? Does anyone know of any pitfalls here?

Thanks

Turboprint uses ppd files. The only difference with turboprint is it compiles the ppd for use with a license. The ppds it compiles are in /etc/cups/ppd/. All that is needed, besides cups, is a ppd file. Ppd files tell what the printer functions are, in a standard script language, originated by Adobe. Virtually every printer is now supported by cups, so you don't need the driver package from the manufacturer. You can pull out the ppd file, and choose that ppd file when you install the printer. Or you can browse through the cups ppd files, and pick the one that matches your printer(s). In the case of Turboprint, it contains some complicated ppd files, that linux developers cannot decipher. Canon does not cooperate with the oss community well, with some of their photo printers.

Thanks for reply;

Yes, I've run across the PPD problem before, actually when I first attempted to install the Canon i550 within CUPS, and realized that one must look at the printer when one purchases it to be certain that it will comply with a CUPS PPD in CUPS and to not rely on Canon, etc., or alternately, make certain that Turboprint supports it.

You said that the PPDs in Turboprint were intricately prepared (my word) which seems to suggest that it would be difficult to extract it or them from the Turboprint files created on the machine. I'll make the attempt.

Thanks again.