Re: Printer driver UI [proposal]

[Michael Goffioul <goffioul imec be>]

> > My ideas up to now are the following:
> > - UI can be described using XML syntax, and embedded in the driver
> >   file (for example, PPD file) using comments. These metadata can
> >   the be extracted and used by a graphical environment like KDE or
> >   GNOME
> 
> Don't use comments, use attributes, and then you can use the CUPS
> API to access them (ppdFindAttr() and friends are part of the
> forthcoming 1.1.19, backported from the 1.2 branch...)

I would say this is just a "detail". Whether it's described in XML
or other format, put as a comment or using PPD attributes or
whatever, this is not important for now. My point is more to know
if people from GUI and printer driver think it would be useful to
have a common extension to printer driver description file, containing
information about UI, that could be used by graphical environments
to integrate smoothly printer driver options in applications.

> DO NOT use host-specific object files!  The whole purpose of PPD
> files (and the XML-based UPDF format, should that ever become a
> reality) is to avoid platform dependencies and allow for sharing
> of printer description data.

Here, I'm thinking for example about the development branch of gimp-print
which introduces very complex options and its own GUI. But this is
something else as those options are not described in any PDL (PPD or
UPDF) anyway, so an additional UI description could not refer to
those options.
I agree that host-specific object files are not a good idea, but
I simply wonder if, with the increasing complexity of drivers, if
everything can still be described in standard XML format.

Bye.
Michael.

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Michael Goffioul		IMEC-DESICS-MIRA
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