Each individual printing device has its own individual INI file to define some basic information and configuration. A directory full of such INI files form a database of printing devices known to the CAPS universe components.

Some settings are generic and must be always present in order to generate further information based on these settings. One example are the so called PPD files which describe the printers and their capabilities. These PPD files are generated individually on the fly when a printing driver registers itself at the printing coordinator.

Note: A PPD file is used by applications to prepare the print data and control the print.

The general character encoding of all INI files is utf-8

Each printing device INI file is divided into sections, the generic settings are expected in the following sections:

Device Description INI files: section [info]

Device Description INI files: section [ppd]

Device Description INI files: section [defaults]

Device Description INI files: section [drivers]

Printing Device Parameters INI files: section [info] for user adaption

Device Description INI files: section [id]

Device Description INI File Naming Conventions

In order to install such a file from the sources, its install path can be retrieved via:

 $ pkg-config --variable=caps_driverdatabase_path caps