[Gnome-print] Re: [Gimp-print-devel] An introduction to gnome-print (fwd)

[Robert L Krawitz <rlk alum mit edu>]

   From: Miguel de Icaza <miguel@helixcode.com>
   Date: 31 May 2000 16:08:32 -0400

   > It's GPL.  You're welcome to use it in any GPL project.  I'd be happy
   > to help you (with whatever time I have; I'm already stretched rather
   > thin), but I want to make sure you know what you're doing here.  I
   > don't particularly agree with the direction you're trying to take
   > (doing the rendering yourself), and I think you're just going to get
   > into trouble in the long run by doing that.

   Ok, so we can not use that code.  Because we want gnome-print to be
   LGPL.   We will have to rewrite the drivers, and redo all the nice
   techniques that you have developed in gimp-print for gnome-print.

Why?  Just use it as a filter (either in the form of the Ghostscript
driver, or as a standalone of some kind) and there's no problem at
all.

   > And yes, I say that from the perspective of someone who's already gone
   > there.  The application -- and application libraries -- isn't the
   > place to be doing rendering.  Device libraries and drivers should be
   > doing that.

   How come?

   As an application programmer I dont care where the rendering is done,
   as far as it gets done.  What is the problem with having the library
   code do it instead of a printer, or an external process?

As an application programmer, you may not.  As a system administrator,
you certainly do.  I've routinely generated single page print files
that exceed 50 MB.  I have a 2.5 MB Postscript file -- an image --
that bloats out to 50 MB when rendered as a high quality escp2/raster
image file for the 870.  My resume -- a 17K Postscript file -- will
render into a multi-megabyte (probably about 10 MB) file as an Epson
print file.  Now, suppose I'm printing a 100 page Postscript document
that's about 1 MB of Postscript.  Am I better off sending one MB or 1
GB over the network and store it in a spool directory?

Now, imagine that I have 10 printers, and on average they have 5 such
jobs queued.  NOW do you see what we're talking about?  It most
certainly DOES matter from a system perspective where the rendering is
done!

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rlk@alum.mit.edu>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf@uunet.uu.net
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton