Can (CUPS) ppd files for Mac OS X be used for linux?

Question

I am looking at buying a printer (actually an all-in-one I prefer for the features it provides, but I want to focus on the printer part here) which does not provide linux drivers, but does provide Mac OS X drivers. I know that both operating systems (can) use CUPS for printing. Does this mean that I could copy the ppd (driver) file from the Mac OS X driver package and use it (modified) under linux?

When looking into the file, there are Mac OS X print dialog-specific lines such as

*APPrinterIconPath: "/Library/Printers/<path to icons file>.icns"

*APDialogExtension: "/Library/Printers/<path to Mac OS X plugin file>.plugin"

*APAutoSetupTool: "/Library/Printers/<path to autoconfig utility>"

that I think I can safely remove. There are also lines with OS X-specific paths such as

*cupsFilter:        "application/vnd.cups-raster 0 /Library/Printers/<path to filter file>"

*OKDitherLibrary: "/Library/Printers/<path to dither library>.dylib"

that I don't know what to do with. As with the last line, there are quite a number of other lines with keywords starting with 'OK', which I think are vendor-specific, such as

*OKPaperCheckManualFeed_CheckOFF: True

*OKSupportCUPaperSizeCheck: True
*OKSupportCustomManualFeed_CheckOFF: True

*OKSupportPCLMediaTypeUSERTYPE: Yes

*OKSupportMarginCentering: True

which I also don't know what to do with.

(As a fallback, given that the printer supports PCL6, I could use the generic driver for that, but then miss out on miss out on possibly interesting functionality.)

Answer 1

PPD files are platform-independent. However, they may reference external executables, and those are platform-dependent. In particular, cupsFilter specifies a program that converts the input from a format that CUPS understands (here, application/vnd.cups-raster, i.e. a bitmap format) into a format that the printer understands. You'll need to find a Linux version of the filter program to use this PPD file under Linux.

To see the state of Linux support for a printer, look it up in the OpenPrinting database.

Since the printer accepts PCL6, you may well be able to use that PPD file and just replace the filter by a generic raster-to-PCL filter.

Answer 2

*OKDitherLibrary: "/Library/Printers/<path to dither library>.dylib"

This line points to an OS X library. Unless you can find a replacement for this file, you likely won't be able to use it under other operating systems at all.