[Openicc] What is exactly needed for color management in a distro?

[Till Kamppeter]

On 05/31/2011 10:28 PM, Richard Hughes wrote:
> On 31 May 2011 18:54, Alastair M. Robinson<blackfive at fakenhamweb.co.uk>  wrote:
>> So does that mean you're going back to using a Ghostscript-based
>> pdftoraster, or are you still going to be using Poppler?
>
> Well, in Fedora we've always been using ghostscript and a ps based
> workflow. I'm intending to work with Tim this cycle and convert it to
> a pdf based workflow.
>

This would be great, to get the PDF workflow also in other distros than 
only Ubuntu/Debian.

> As to using poppler, I'm not sure. I assume poppler installs a filter
> into CUPS like gstoraster? If so, that needs patching to contact
> colord just like gstoraster does, on the assumption poppler can now
> handle external ICC output profiles. I'm quite happy to do the work if
> this is the case.
>

No, Poppler does not ship a filter in its upstream package, but the 
Japanese OpenPrinting members have created a pdftoraster filter based on 
Poppler. This filter is the first (and perhaps the last) time used in a 
distribution by default in Ubuntu Natty. Poppler is also used for the 
PDF-PostScript conversion in the PDF workflow if the printer is a 
PostScript printer. To color-manage this path we would need a colord 
patch for Poppler (if color management does not happen inside the 
PostScript printer in such a case). So Richard, the colord patch for 
Poppler is still needed.

One could also switch the pdftops filter of CUPS to Ghostscript (then 
Poppler remains only in the pdftopdf filter which does not touch color 
management) as recently (to be available in GS 9.03) the Ghostscripty 
developers have improved the "ps2write" output device to produce 
DSC-conforming PostScript and so solved the problem of bad PS output by 
Ghostscript. This needs to be investigated, to assure that the quality 
of Ghostscripts PostScript is really good enough for the daily printing 
demands.

    Till