From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <4901C12D.7010200@fakenhamweb.co.uk> Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:35:57 +0100 From: "Alastair M. Robinson" MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <200810132357.m9DNvMRf015955@dsl092-065-009.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net> <48FB37A3.8090007@gmail.com> <200810191602.m9JG2D84030719@dsl092-065-009.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net> <48FF3D87.4070807@gmail.com> <69B1EF35-D85E-477C-848C-AB59A7745809@mmiworks.net> <200810230019.m9N0JCIp018128@dsl092-065-009.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net> <0EBE855D-5320-4996-A88F-F81BF3EDA88E@mmiworks.net> In-Reply-To: <0EBE855D-5320-4996-A88F-F81BF3EDA88E@mmiworks.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Printing-architecture] [Gimp-print-devel] Looking ahead to 5.3 List-Id: Printing architecture under linux List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: peter sikking Cc: Robert Krawitz , printing-architecture@lists.linux-foundation.org, gimp-print-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, till.kamppeter@gmail.com Hi, peter sikking wrote: > For anybody to be able to help you at all, you first need to > set a clear vision for what the purpose of gutenprint is in > the printing world of today. Part of what makes this difficult is that gutenprint is at the same time behind-the-scenes infrastructure, and also user-facing, since the structure of its options system is exposed indirectly through the PPDs. > You will have to say good bye to > some old goals. I think one thing we may have to revisit will be the assumption that gutenprint's options are mapped directly to options in the printing dialog. The introduction of simplified PPDs was a step in this direction, but the difficulty we've had in figuring out how to handle calibration curves and so on makes me think it may be time to go further. With the recent push to make the Epson driver more data-driven, and pulling previously hard-coded data into XML files, I wonder whether we need to consider having an administration tool, completely separate from the PPD-based print chain, which can be used by administrators and "Domain Experts" (people who know how to handle colour-management and calibration, but don't care about code) to fine tune things like the low-level ink controls, and calibration curves, which are so hard to fit into a user-facing print dialog. Gutenprint's "Quality" and "Media Type" options between them set a large number of options to hard-coded defaults - I envisage this hypothetical administration tool being used to *change* these defaults, and save them (along with calibration curves, and ideally ICC profiles too) as files which could then be shared with other users. This would solve another difficulty that was brought up when we first started discussing calibration and linearization - being able to *distribute* and share settings. None of this detracts from the continued ability of software which uses Gutenprint directly, like the advanced print plugin, or PhotoPrint, from continuing to offer full control, but it could potentially make life much more pleasant for "one-click-print" users. All the best, -- Alastair M. Robinson