<chapter id="final-word-from-author">
<title>Final word from the Author</title>

<sect1 id="who-am-i">
<title>Who am I, what is my business? </title>

<para>
My employer is Danka Deutschland GmbH, a leading and
manufacturer-independent provider of professional and hi-speed digital
printing systems, black-and-white as well as color. Danka provides
hardware, software, service, maintenance, consumables and customized
solutions for the products in its portfolio.  I work there as a
System Engineer.  Amongst the brands Danka offers are Heidelberg
(formerly Kodak), Canon, &Hewlett-Packard;, Hitachi, Infotec and
EfI.</para>

<para>
My acquaintance with &Linux; and the Free Software community is not
too old. When I started to play around with &Linux; at the beginning
of 1999, my deepest disappointment was the poor support for
printing. True, I made all our machines spit out simplex prints -- but
what about duplex? What about punching the output? How to make sorting
work? Or stapling, cover sheets and all the other beautiful finishing
options our engines offer to customers? No way -- at least for me as a
non-geek!</para>

<para>
I began a search on the Internet for a solution. Fortunately not
much later, in May 1999, Mike Sweet, principal developer of &CUPS;,
announced the first Beta release of this superb piece of printing
software.  After trying it briefly, I knew this was it!</para>

<para>
Next thing I attempted: to make &Linux; distributions interested in
this new stuff. Believe me -- it was more than tenacious! They seemed
to think they already had the best thing they could get in
printing. One reason probably was that they (and many &Linux;
developers) never had to think about how to best support a printer
duplexer -- because one had never come near their own
desks...</para>

<para>
Finally, my attempts to make some &Linux; print publications
interested in &CUPS; <quote>backfired</quote> on me - one editor
squeezed me into writing a series on the subject myself.  And this is
how some people started to give me the nickname <quote>CUPS
Evangelist</quote>. I will not get rid of this nick anytime soon, now
that even the &kde; people wedged me into their timeframe of
releases. Oh, boy...</para>

<para>Anyway, &CUPS; is now making its way around the world and it
might well become a triumphal one: I am a little bit proud to have
supported and contributed to this from near the beginning.</para>

<para>It should encourage you: Even if some more experienced &Linux;
users than you are sceptical about it, and even if your programming
skills are next to zero (like mine) - there are a lot of tasks and
jobs and ideas, and talent that you can contribute to the Free Software
community. Not least inside the &kde; project... ;-)
</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="credits">
<title>Credits</title>

<para>I'd like to thank...</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Mike Sweet for developing &CUPS; in the first place</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Jean-Eric Cuendet for starting <application>kups</application>
and <application>qtcups</application>, the predecessors of
&kdeprint;</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Michael Goffioul for doing all the hard work recently</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Martin Konold for thinking twice</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Sven Guckes for teaching me a few things about the art of <quote>survival
on the terminal</quote> (just in case &kde; is not there ;-) )</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>...too numerous others to mention who also let me snatch bits
and bytes of knowledge
off them</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para> and last, but not least: Tom Schwaller for encouraging me
to get into <quote>documentation
writing</quote></para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="caveats">
<title>Caveats</title>

<para>&kdeprint; has been developed on a system using &CUPS; 1.1.6.
&kdeprint; has been tested on other versions of &CUPS; and so
far no incompatibilities are known. By the time of writing
this Handbook, &CUPS; 1.1.9 is out with a few new features
not yet supported by &kdeprint;. Of course you are able to
access these features, but you will need to bypass &kdeprint;
and use the &CUPS; command-line tools or edit configuration
files manually. &kdeprint;'s development will go on and this
Handbook strives to always be the best available user documentation
resource for it.</para>

</sect1>

</chapter>
