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

[Michael Sweet <mike easysw com>]

Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 
> > This is one issue that has come up before: aside from maybe
> > providing a basic driver for PCL printers, I don't think the
> > right "solution" is to embed drivers in the applications.
> 
> The PCL driver just happens to be the first driver that has been
> developed on top of the generic RGB rasterizer.
> 
> It is not a "basic" driver for PCL printers, it is designed to print
> perfecly beautiful pages on pretty much every PCL printer in
> existance.

Well, I wish you good luck, then.  However, please accept my
advice (from developing PCL drivers for 12 years) that any driver
you are likely to develop will not handle all printers or provide
optimal output.

> ...
> I looked "below" and never found anything relevant, nor a way to
> sustain your claim of "not scale".  New device drivers are just new
> shared library object files.  Your point?

"Corporate" users want accounting, security, quotas, encryption, etc.
Sending raw print data to the printing system prevents that
functionality from being realized, making wider acceptance of GNOME,
Linux, etc. more difficult.

As for scalability, adding DSOs doesn't mean your solution is
scalable.  How many DSOs are required to implement N drivers?  N
DSOs?  And what about non-GNOME applications?  What do *those*
applications do for printing?!?

> ...
> Well, then they would have to compile a few extra packages.  What is
> the big deal?   You suggest that reimplementing all of the GNOME

There are a substantial number of packages that *don't* get used
because of dependencies on other large packages.  GNOME is no small
thing.

> dependencies into gimp-print is a better approach for the sake of
> "those that dont have GNOME installed"?  It seems like the benefits
> outweight the problems.

The thing is, all of the "enhancements" you've suggested are
easily added to PostScript output *without* GNOME code.

> Good.  Then we just need to use modified PPD files as our
> "repository" for information.  Next?

You don't get it - you can use PPD files that the printer drivers
(external from GNOME) provide; GNOME just needs to output PostScript.

This method works for both CUPS and LPD based printing, BTW.

> ...
> You can just link with PPD and expose its internals trough the same
> API you would access our configuration data.

Again, the problem is keeping the driver data in sync.  Unless you
plan on embedding the information in each driver DSO, this task will
prove extremely difficult.

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