Re: [Gnome-print] Universal binary file format

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris ariman ee>]

On 19 Apr 2000, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

> > I would still vote for adding chunk size parameter to metafile commands.
> 
> Basically, I disliked this idea because it is going to waste a lot of
> space, for an extreme case.
> 
> What about an intermediate solution:
> 
> 	1. We keep all of our commands as we have them now.
> 
> 	2. We add a new command "nested op" that would contain chunk
>            size, operation, and data for the operation.
> 
> 	   If we do not know how to handle the operation, then we just
> 	   skip the size bytes.

Agree, even I do not share the extreme caution about file size - if we
really care, we should compress it. Compressing loads of equal integers
actually wastes very little space.

Something like:

GNOME_META_EXTENSION
string version
int chunk_size
buffer chunk

?

I hope that if gnome-print reach 1.0, its basic APIs will cover 99.9% of
all printing now and in future. So if gnome-print (>=2) ever will add
APIs, maybe there would be not much space wasting if these add little
extra space.

Also, I'll add missing functions to GnomePrintMeta - currently it crashed,
if I tried to do gnome_print_setopacity.

Lauris