[ANNOUNCE] PyKota v1.20 BETA is out !

[Jerome Alet]

Hi,

I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of PyKota v1.20 BETA.

PyKota is a GPLed print quota and accounting software for CUPS and LPRng
written in the Python language.

This software can store its datas either in LDAP or in a PostgreSQL
database, and features both hardware and software accounting.

Hardware accounting supports SNMP, PJL, Netatalk, or any other method you
may create yourself.

Software accounting natively supports PostScript, PDF, PCL3, PCL4, PCL5,
PCLXL (aka PCL6), and ESC/P2 but here too you can use your own accounting
software if you prefer.

In fact its great extensibility allows you to plug your own software at
most strategic points, giving an unprecedented versatility.

PyKota is available either in the form of 20 US$ yearly subscriptions to
Official packages (tarballs, .rpm and .deb), or for no fee through the use
of CVS.

Learn more about PyKota or download it from :

  http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/PyKota/action_Presentation

List of changes in 1.20BETA compared to 1.19 :
----------------------------------------------

  - Added internal handling of SNMP and PJL_over_TCP/9100 queries
    through the magic "hardware(snmp)" and "hardware(pjl)" accounter
    directives' values.
    This tremendously lowers the CPU usage because no subprocess has to be
    launched, and is generally much more reliable than using an external
    script. The use of external scripts is still allowed though, but
    internal handling is now the preferred way if your printer supports
    this.
    NB : For SNMP you need to install the http://pysnmp.sf.net module.
  
  - Introduction of the new dumpykota command which can dump PyKota's
    datas in the following formats :
    
        - comma separated values ;
        
        - semicolon separated values ;
        
        - tab separated values ;
        
        - XML.
        
    Importing datas in a spreadsheet can now be done through a data dump
    and import, in addition to using the PostgreSQL ODBC driver. This
    allows people who use the LDAP backend to create nice reports too.
        
  - Introduction of the new autopykota command to ease the automation
    of user account creation on first print when the limiting factor is
    their account balance's value : this commands takes care of a special
    case not directly handled by edpykota.
    
  - Introduced the notion of PyKota administrators (e.g. members
    of the lpadmin group) to delegate priviledges to non-root users. This
    is now enforced in dangerous commands like pkprinters, edpykota, as
    well as in the data dumper who could otherwise reveal private
    informations. The reporting tool and user warning tool accept to be
    run in extended mode by non-root users if they are PyKota
    administrators.
    
  - Numerous fixes for charset encoding. All textual
    fields are now stored as UTF-8 encoded strings.
    
  - Improvements in LPRng printer's hostname detection code.
  
  - An md5 checksum of each job's datas is now computed
    and exported to subprocesses as an environment variable. It will be
    added to the database schema in the future, this will allow the admin
    to refuse duplicate jobs through a configuration directive.
    
  - Added the winbind_separator configuration directive to
    automatically strip out the Windows/Samba domain name when printing.
    
  - Added the --hardreset command line option to edpykota
    to also reset users' life time page counters to 0 in addition to the
    actual page counter.
    
  - Added full support for PCL3 and ESC/P2 in software accounter.
    More than 60 GhostScript devices are now supported and checked when
    running the testsuite.
    Supported Page Description Languages are now :
    
        - DSC compliant PostScript ;
        
        - Binary PostScript ;
        
        - PDF ;
        
        - From PCL3 to PCL5 ;
        
        - PCL6 (aka PCLXL) ;
        
        - ESC/P2 ;
        
  - Improved the software accounter to correctly handle the
    number of copies if set in the job's datas (not PJL yet though).
    
  - All command line tools' help is now internationalized,
    as well as all manual pages.
    NB : For this BETA release only the English, French (and Belgian
    French), and Spanish help and manual pages are complete.
  
  - Added the German and Belgian-French translations.
  
  - Lots of small fixes all over the place.
  
Comments are very much welcome.

Thank you for reading.

Jerome Alet