"A few weeks ago, Jonathan had asked me on IRC in passing why kprinter and KDEPrint 3.5.1 didn't work with CUPS-1.2. My reply had been like 'CUPS-1.2 hasn't even released an alpha or beta tarball--w.t.h. does Ubuntu Dapper plan to include an SVN version of a piece of core software which has a yet unknown release date??' Of course, this is not Jonathan's personal field of work--Kubuntu just inherits the CUPS version and setup which the Ubuntu main developers decided for.
"Regarding an impending CUPS-1.2 release, prospects have become much brighter in the meanwhile. During March, Mike Sweet released 2 Betas and the first Release Candidate. So a final 1.2.0 release seems pretty close now..."