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

[Michael Sweet <mike easysw com>]

Juantomas Garcia wrote:
> ...
> I'm developing printing apps for 15 years in very diverse OS.
> Sometimes we're talking about the very low level and we're losting
> the top level of the model.
> ...
> do it in a low (and dependent) api. But my wish as developer is got
> one api very close the way I draw in the screen and don't have in my
> program specialized code. The hard and smart work must be doing for
> the printer driver.
> ...

I think the main problem is that the GNOME-print developers want to
implement all of the low-level functionality of printer drivers and
printer management in GNOME-print, while the rest of the development
community is trying to develop a printing solution that GNOME-print
can interface with at a higher level.

To the application developer and user, these details are non-issues.
They want to print from their applications, and don't usually care
how it is done as long as it works.

However, when you start looking at supporting the printing needs
of business users the GNOME printer-driver-in-a-DSO design falls
apart.  Accounting, quotas, resource management, etc. all become
more difficult because all of the low-level printing details are
being managed by GNOME-print and are not accessable to non-GNOME
apps.  I would be surprised if even 1% of the available free
software is based on GNOME, so this limitation is significant
and won't go away.

If instead GNOME-print utilizes the existing printing software,
the complexity of GNOME-print will be reduced.  The rendering
architecture can still be used to generate previews inside
GNOME applications, and to do compositing when the printer
format (PostScript/whatever) doesn't support any advanced
operations that are used by the app.

Using existing printing software also allows non-GNOME apps
to print using the same drivers.  Business users will be able
to do accounting, quotas, resource management, etc.  (GNOME
will still have the edge on the "advanced" graphics operations,
but that will be transparent to the user and developer.)

What it boils down to is that we need a solution for UNIX/Linux,
not just GNOME.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products                  mike@easysw.com
Printing Software for UNIX                       http://www.easysw.com