This is a request for enhancement. I was excited to see that Fedora has the Zeroconf avahi-daemon running by default, but unfortunately system-config-printer doesn't use it. Virtually every new network printer has Zeroconf--it's a very cheap feature. The upcoming CUPS 1.3 will publish shared printers as Zeroconf _printer._tcp services, which would of course be awesome to take advantage of: http://www.cups.org/roadmap.php (Shared Mac printers also publish using zeroconf.) After I installed the avahi-tools package I can easily browse the available printers, --resolve would give additional info like IP address: # avahi-browse --terminate _printer._tcp + eth0 IPv4 hp color LaserJet 3500 (00306EC4BCFF) UNIX Printer local + eth0 IPv4 hp color LaserJet 4600 (0001E6739D76) UNIX Printer local For anyone not familiar with Zeroconf, as you might expect the O'Reilly book is quite good: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bonjour/toc.html
Update: CUPS-1.3b1 has support for Apple's implementation of Bonjour. The plan is to add support for other implementations but it isn't there yet.
Good news: I've managed to get it to build against avahi-compat-libdns_sd. Leaving open until the SELinux policy is adjusted to let cupsd talk to Avahi via D-Bus.
$ avahi-browse --terminate _ipp._tcp + eth1 IPv4 HEWLETT-PACKARD DESKJET 990C (HAL) @ hoopoe.elk Internet Printer local