Comment 1 for bug 59409

ubuntu-desktop used to have a dependency on hpijs-ppds making it install by default but this was removed on 29 Aug.

ubuntu-meta (1.17) edgy; urgency=low

  * Refreshed dependencies
  * Removed hpijs-ppds from desktop-i386, desktop-amd64, desktop-
    powerpc, desktop-ia64, desktop-sparc, desktop-hppa
  * Removed foomatic-filters-ppds from desktop-i386, desktop-amd64,
    desktop-powerpc, desktop-ia64, desktop-sparc, desktop-hppa

 -- Tollef Fog Heen <email address hidden> Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:41:49 +0200

> And so CUPS 1.2 generates the HPIJS PPDs on the fly.

PPDs are NOT generated on the fly on my Edgy system, did you put a symlink in /usr/lib/cups/driver manually?
I have suggested to move to dynamically generated PPDs here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-August/020320.html
But currently a symlink from /usr/lib/cups/driver/foomatic to /usr/bin/foomatic-ppdfile is not present in Edgy and the static PPD files under /usr/share/ppd are used.
Since hpijs-ppds and foomatic-filters-ppds were removed from ubuntu-desktop this would mean that a freshly installed Edgy would have nearly no printer drivers installed?
The decision of using dynamically generated PPDs versus static PPDs should be worked out as soon as possible.

> Then the Fax PPD will be available without adding tons of unneeded PPDs.

I don't agree since we still need the static hpijs-ppds at this moment to setup a printer queue with hp-setup from hplip.

For the hpijs PPDs it is a little bit difficult to decide weather to include static or dynamically generated PPDs only for 2 reasons:
1. The hp-setup printer queue setup tool from hplip only works with static PPDs. We could keep the HP hpijs PPDs together with real PostScript PPDs from hplip source but they shouldn't be installed under /usr/share/ppd to avoid duplicate entries when PPDs are retrieved via the CUPS API. They could be installed under e.g. /usr/share/hplip/ppd. It would still be better to alter hp-setup to use the CUPS API or the command line interface for driver programs for retrieving PPDs, because then the same PPD file would be used independent of the printer queue setup tool that was used.
Another possibillity would be to remove hp-setup from Ubuntu so it can't be used for queue setup.
2. Moving to dynamically generated PPDs from foomatic-db-hpijs would provide the missing non-HP hpijs PPDs (see Malone bug #49102).

So it looks like we need both at this moment, what is you opinion about this Till?