From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Message-ID: <44F2D4F1.4010003@easysw.com> Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 07:35:13 -0400 From: Michael Sweet MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <200608281158.32769.spillner@kde.org> In-Reply-To: <200608281158.32769.spillner@kde.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Printing-architecture] Printer dialog generation List-Id: Printing architecture under linux List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Josef Spillner Cc: printing-architecture@lists.freestandards.org As Till has already pointed out, this is something we will be discussing at the next summit... I'm actually the person that is supposed to be reporting on the available options at the next summit to jump start the work in this area - I'll reply in-line to your questions... Josef Spillner wrote: > ... > Now there are a few questions to those who could help: > * What are the issues with current print dialogs that could or should be > solved with GUI generation? There are two main driving factors behind it: 1. Manufacturers of high-end printing solutions (hardware and software) want to provide greater control over print jobs than is possible via PPD files and what is normally provided by applications - mainly in the area of finishing (binding, folding, stapling, punching, etc.) but also for work flow management. 2. Application-specific printing options/panels that can be used with multiple print dialog implementations, ultimately to allow support for a common (XDG/user-selected) print dialog. > * Are there other printer description formats I should have a look at? UPDF was an attempt by the PWG to define a printer description format that went beyond just PostScript, however it has not been adopted by anyone that I know of and I personally am not a big fan of it: http://www.pwg.org/updf > * Is there any work being done in this area already? At this point we are more in an information-gathering phase. I've reviewed the (many!) XML (and other text-based) user interface description formats that could be used and am preparing a report for the printing summit. XUL (Mozilla.org's XML UI language) is clearly the most widely deployed and most capable, however it also carries a significant overhead for implementation - code exists and could be fairly easily integrated with KDE and GNOME via XULRunner, however you'll add a significant amount of code (the XULRunner source code is 33 megs bzip'd!), so I'm not too keen on using XULRunner or XUL as-is. Ultimately we need to get better requirements for *what* needs to be supported, from printer and applications vendors *and* from users and administrators who may want to add site-specific stuff to the print dialog, too. So far our requirements list is pretty short (and challenging): 1. Cross-platform (operating system, architecture, desktop, UI toolkit) 2. No binaries (executables or plug-ins) 3. Embeddable in PPD files or some other way to package the UI such that the UI and printer description/command data are available via a single URI 4. Same level of localization possible as with current PPD files. 5. Accessible to persons with disabilities What we don't have is a list of required UI elements and behaviors that need to be supported. I'd like to put together sample use cases we can use as a baseline to determine these requirements and then form the basis of a test, conformance, and demo suite for the new UI "technology" that gets incorporated into CUPS and the various desktops. -- ______________________________________________________________________ Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products mike at easysw dot com Internet Printing and Publishing Software http://www.easysw.com