Re: An Idea...

[zucchi zedzone mmc com au (NotZed)]

> (Ghostscript does support ppd files. Just take a look at
> /usr/share/ghostscript/[version]/doc. Idem for printer resolutions
> such as 600x600)

Still, i'm not sure they help much with non-postcript printers, which
is the main problem.

> After reading a few mails on that subject, I guess that a clean and
> consistent way to do all those things would be to create an abstraction
> between the actual printing format and the applications. Such as the one
> windows use (GDI is used for both printing and displaying on screen).
> gnome-print could create postscript code without the apps developers to
> worry about it.

Yes, it does.  It does it already.

> For what the drivers are concerned, I still think ghostscript should be
> used for the non-postscript printers. As it includes already a lot of
> good drivers, the missing features such as "econofast" could easily be
> added to the existing drivers. For example the Epson Stylus driver in gs
> contains code to manage "MicroWeave technology" of those printers...
> Ghostscript is GNU software and so it could and should be enhanced in
> the same philosophy.

The big problem is that Ghostscript does a very poor job at rendering
fonts.  Just try running 'gs' on just about any file and see just how
poor the fonts are.

> Gnome-print would then be used as a abstraction medium.
> What do you think?

It will be, but probably not for ghostscript (I already suggested this
but Miguel does not like it, and now i see his point).  We can do
a much better job than ghostscript, and i dont even think it will be
that hard.

BTW supporting "MicroWeave(tm)" techonology is a cinch, all you do is tell
the printer to use it, then send it raster data line by line
(optionally run-length-encoded).  Nothing fancy at all to use it, if
you dont tell it to use microweave you can even use an identical
method to send it print data ...  I suspect econofast is similar; the
smarts are in the printer, not the driver.

Looking through the printer driver code for the epson stylus in gs -
ugh it is a total nightmare, and the docs even say it is impossible to
read.  (at least in 4.03, i dont know if it was cleaned up in 5.x
...), I really dont see why it is so complex.

 Michael