Re: RFC: A draft proposal for the future of the GNOME printingsystem.

[Derek Simkowiak <dereks kd-dev com>]

> RFC: A draft proposal for the future of the GNOME printing system.

	I haven't been watching the Gnome print system development, but I
don't see why using Postscript isn't blatantly obvious, for all the
reasons mentioned in this RFC.  What else could we even consider? 

	I'm working on a Gtk+-only text editor (I'm currently bogged down
in writing a new text widget :), and for my printing system I plan to pipe
the text file through "mpage" (which converts text into Postscript).  
Type "man mpage" and you'll immediately see the huge variety of print
options I'll be able to offer in my program.  All I need to do is put
together a GUI dialog box around the common/useful mpage command-line
options and boom! I've got a full-blown printing system that works with
any printer supported by Red Hat Linux (read: Ghostscript filters).

	One point not mentioned in the RFC is all the pre-existing Open
Source code, algorithms, and documentation built around Postscript.  If we
don't go with Postscript, we would not only need to re-invent the wheel,
but we'd need to throw out a mature, stable, well-supported wheel at the
same time.

	...Not to mention that many printers support Postscript right out
of the box.

	Also, using Postscript is a proven model.  If Postscript works for
GNUStep, I don't see why it shouldn't work for Gnome.


--Derek

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