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

[Robert L Krawitz <rlk alum mit edu>]

   Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 01:04:57 +0200 (CEST)
   From: Lauris Kaplinski <lauris@ariman.ee>

   On Sat, 3 Jun 2000, Michael Sweet wrote:

   > Miguel de Icaza wrote:
   > > ...
   > > Hence, reinventing a little piece of Postscript every time.
   > 
   > Actually, it sounds like you've already done that!

   But we reinvent it in library. According to your approach, every app
   should reimplement it separately.

Having a Caanvas that applications -- even just GNOME applications --
can draw to that then generates Postscript is very much a worthy
goal.  Likewise a layer that interprets PPD files to provide an
abstract interface for applications.  The problem that Mike and I have
is with your insistence on doing the final rendering yourselves.  Mike
and I have been trying to explain just why doing the rendering
yourselves is a bad idea.

Postscript is a perfectly good IL.  IMHO, you should concentrate on
the abstractions needed to help applications generate the IL.  GNOME
is a front end system.

   > > They only require very specialized applications because the
   > > underlying printing system does not move up with the times as Lauris
   > > pointed out.
   > 
   > Talking about writing a driver for Gnumeric (or any GNOME app) so
   > you can print to a million dollar piece of hardware is ridiculous.

   Prediction:
   Consumer-level holographic printers would be out before 2005
   As Y2K showed, software usually lasts longer.

That's entirely missing the point.  Maybe they will (my guess would be
3-5 years later, but that's irrelevant); Mike's point is just as
valid.  The point is that for the driver to be in the APPLICATION
layer it's all wrong.

All that you need to do to support such a printer is extend the
Caanvas to support three-dimensional drawing.  It's a safe bet that
folks like Raph or Jean-Marc Verbavatz or Thomas Tonino or myself
would write the appropriate CUPS driver, and then you're all set.

-- 
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