[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#544172: Fwd: Bug#544172: cups: please remove useless composite filter cpdftocps

[Till Kamppeter]

No, this is a part of the PDF printing workflow. As PDF is the standard 
job format, PostScript printers need a driver now, which turns PDF to 
PostScript and especuially inserts the option code of the PPD into the 
PostScript output. This is done by the cpdftocps filter.

Transforming incoming PostScript into PDF and then back to PostScript is 
done to do page management (N-up, even/odd pages, reverse order, 
selected pages, ...) on a PDF data stream (done by pdftopdf), as in PDF 
you can always reliably tell the pages apart. The incoming PostScript 
data often comes in non-DSC-conforming form (note that PostScript is a 
programming language) and so the page management simply does not work, 
leading to broken printouts or even no printout at all.

Note also that the cost factors are not the expected CPU load, but a way 
of control to get the preferred filters used if there is more than one 
solution.

See also

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/PDF_as_Standard_Print_Job_Format

    Till


Martin Pitt wrote:
> Hello Till,
> 
> cpdftocps is a local filter, is this obsolete?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Martin