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

[Michael Sweet <mike easysw com>]

Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> ...
> The "dump to ghostscript, process, send to printer" solution is
> exactly what I believe to be fully broken for Unix to succeed on the
> desktop.  We have the infrastructure now to do things right, and I
> want to do this.

What's broken is LPD, and the sooner we eliminate LPD from the scene
the better.

> ...
> It does not matter.  Just specify that your band is the size of the
> page.  Problem solved.

Um, problem *not* solved.

Do some math: 8.5x11x1440x720x3 (assuming 24-bit RGB at device
resolution) = 85MB for a single page of graphics if you RIP the
entire bitmap in memory.  Double that for a tabloid size printer,
and forget about it if you hook up a large-format plotter (E size
= 1.4GB)

That said, as long as the bands are generated from top to bottom
and there is some sort of interface to indicate the beginning and
end of a page then any soft-weaved driver can work with a banded
RIP (like GS 5.50)

> ...
> I do not follow this, but it is ok.

See "http://www.cups.org";; in short, CUPS replaces the LPD printing
system with an IPP-based printing system.  Among other things, CUPS
provides applications with access to printer information (PPD files
primarily, but also current status, etc.) through IPP and HTTP, and
provides the framework for modern printer drivers under UNIX.

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