The HP Inkjet project faq explicitly suggests the use of hpoj for parallel-connected multi-functional devices like my HP OfficeJet 725. It's true that it's old, but it still works pretty well. Can't we have both hplip, for newer devices, and hpoj, for older ones? I don't expect conflicts, since the latter requires manual configuration.
FWIW, I've installed FC4's hpoj on FC devel, configured it, and now the printer works again. The only oddity was that cups really seemed to want an hplip daemonsto be running, otherwise it would log a message about being unable to contact an hp daemon, and then the unrelated printer wouldn't work.
I've removed the Obsoletes: tags for hpoj in hplip.spec, and reinstated PTAL support in system-config-printer. How about if the hpoj package is added to Fedora Extras?
Thanks. hpoj in extras sounds fine, especially if the FC5 installer can pull stuff from extras. That said, my first inclination would be to consider something as basic as supporting parallel printers to be Core material, but then, since ptal requires manual configuration anyway, I guess there's very little advantage to having it in Core rather than Extras. Do you plan on maintaining it in Extras yourself? Thanks again,
I hadn't been planning on maintaining it in Extras myself, but was hoping that someone else might step forward to do it.
Apparently HPLIP is going to grow parallel port support in the FC5 timeframe.
It did, rawhide can already handle my parallel-connected printer. Yay!