Hi,
I would like to request that Square implement CUPS protocols on all its devices (most notably the locked-down Square Register) so any printer, USB models (or other) can be used over CUPS.
What?
As some of your engineers might know, CUPS (https://cups.org) is an open-source standards-based print server developed by Apple but it works on any OS.
Why?
We use the latest STAR Printers, so no issues there. But we have multiple services at multiple locations that need multiple printers (and those printers need to be managed centrally).
How?
CUPS is relatively easy to get up and running on a Raspberry Pi, or even a basic (older) laptop, and USB (or even parallel) printers can be plugged in and registered on the network as a service, then printed to, over the internet, as well as locally.
So what would be great, is if Square can have their devices recognise CUPS and use printers that are on the network (or across the internet).
That way there's only one service/ codebase for Square's Engineers to manage, because thousands of printers, (thermal, label etc.) work with CUPS.
Thank you
--------------------------------------------------
More info (from GitHub);
CUPS is a standards-based, open source printing system developed by Apple Inc. for macOS® and other UNIX®-like operating systems. CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol ("IPP") and provides System V and Berkeley command-line interfaces, a web interface, and a C API to manage printers and print jobs. It supports printing to both local (parallel, serial, USB) and networked printers, and printers can be shared from one computer to another, even over the Internet!
Internally, CUPS uses PostScript Printer Description ("PPD") files to describe printer capabilities and features and a wide variety of generic and device- specific programs to convert and print many types of files.
CUPS is licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0.
Source code: https://github.com/apple/cups
