*BSD News Article 13140


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From: john@iastate.edu (John Hascall)
Subject: Re: How to vote on POSIX Printing
Message-ID: <C48xKo.IzK@news.iastate.edu>
Sender: news@news.iastate.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
References: <C36JrI.E8K@ra.nrl.navy.mil> <C3CKCp.CFw@world.std.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1993 15:55:36 GMT
Lines: 36

geer@world.std.com (Dan Geer) writes:
}atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil (Randall Atkinson) writes:
}>  A few weeks back, during USENIX in fact, there was much discussion
}>on the net of the POSIX intent to standardise the not widely used
}>printing mechanisms defined by the Palladium system as the standard
}>UNIX printing commands.
}>
}>  Palladium was at one time widely installed at MIT, but large
}>portions of MIT removed it because Palladium was unusable.  ...

}This thumbnail history is seriously revisionist, ...

}If you care to vote on this matter, I would suggest you take
}further care than depending on this poster's guidance.

I agree.

}I, for one, strongly recommend a favorable vote, ...

Here, I disagree strongly.  Our site is a `spin-off' of MIT's
Project Athena (and we are now larger in some ways), and we took a
serious look at Palladium before deciding it was not for us.

We also decided that "basic" lpr was not right for us (we are
using a locally written distributed system which looks like lpr/lpq/...
on the outside for our ~225 printers of ~40 different types).

I would suggest the reader take neither Dan Geer's nor my advice, but
get a copy of MIT's palladium documents and make your own informed choice.

John
-- 
John Hascall                   ``An ill-chosen word is the fool's messenger.''
Systems Software Engineer
Project Vincent
Iowa State University Computation Center  +  Ames, IA  50011  +  515/294-9551