> In most cases (99%), the answer is CLEAR TEXT password over the wire.
sure, when you first configure the printer. and you use that
clear text password to authenticate yourself to the printer,
so that you can tell it "don't allow clear text passwords any more".
the point is that configuring a printer to support a small number
of username/password combinations via http digest is no more
difficult than the other kinds of printer configuration that
already exist.
Keith