Re: [Gnome-print] Future Changes in Gnome Print.

[Michael Meeks <michael nuclecu unam mx>]

Hi Miguel,

On 8 May 2000, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 1. Printer Profiles.
>
>    A printer profile will be an XML structure that will contain
>    information about a specific printer that would enable gnome-print
>    to print to it.

	Sounds nice. I assume these will only be for non-postscript
printers, leaving PPD/GPr to deal with the vagiaries of postscript
printing ?

>       <printer>
>          <guid>947adab1-9fc1-4823-95a5-04a79146fa50</guid>
>          <vendor>Hewlett Packard</vendor>
>          <model>XXX</model>
>       </printer>
>
>    The "GUID" is a unique identifier, generated by the "uuidgen"
>    program.

	It seems that the GUID is fast becoming a fashionable
idiosyncracy. Everywhere people seem to propose it without any clear
rational or consideration of the alternatives. It would seem to me [ from
my not copious knowledge of printers and versions ] that a far more
auspicious scheme would be to have a human readable non-fixed length
string there eg.

	Manufacturer:Model String:Revision Number:Mod Rev:more specifics

	By that stage you have got an extremely unique number eg.

	HP:Deskjet:550C:UP:serial 01367850

	Ok, so of course this is no more unique than:

	947adab1-9fc1-4823-95a5-04a79146fa50

	But I would suggest that it is imeasurably more valuable to anyone
with a clue, it is easy to remember, trivial to type into a grep. It would
also seem that the 'Company Name' namespace provides a virtualy conflict
free naming scheme.

>    You can inhering most settings from a previous profile, for
>    example:

	This is a really great idea, inheriting attributes.

>       3. A set of defaults to be applied to the printer.

	Nice.

	Regards,

		Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks@gnu.org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot