Re: [Gnome-print] Universal binary file format

[Morten Welinder <terra diku dk>]

   - As I understood, it is designed to be platform independent, i.e.
   interchangeable between computers. But can anybody give me some examples,
   for which uses this can be useful? Not spooling - this is more lowlevel.
   Is that for bonobo?

Saving previews, and bonobo.  Spooling too, if printer queue manager and
printing program are different.

   Example: I tried to use metafile for temporary rendering - but
   unfortunately it refuses to render before buffer is closed. Marking buffer
   length without closing ended with 'serious metafile corruption' error.

Well, don't do that then.  Sure, the error mesage isn't great, but
once you fix your program, all is fine.

   'AIFF''GPMF'{metafile size}'VERS'{string length}"Gnome Print Metafile 1.2"
   'PAGE'{size of page description}'MOVE'{8}$x$$y$'LINE'{8}$x$$y$
   etc. (I have to look more closely to spec - this is only as I remember it)
   'ABCD' is four-byte designator
   {number} is 32 bit integer (HSB first)
   $number$ is 32 bit float (IEEE standard)

I don't see that we would be gaining anything.  We would (a) lose
independence of integer size, (b) end up with too little floating
point precision to render right.

We would still have a binary file which you could do basically nothing
with, but render it.  The current metafile format is quite light weight;
adding an extra print method is almost trivial.

Morten