Printer Ink levels and capabilities

[Richard Hughes]

On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 21:45 +0100, Martin Owens wrote:
> sounds great..

>         For instance, for my old epson, I could imagine:
>         
>         printer.number_cartridges = 2 (int)
>         printer.cartridge_names = {black, composite}
>         printer.ink_level = {80, 45} (strlist)
>         printer.interface_type = "epson" (string)
> 
> that would be black and colour right?
> ink level is sometimes 'not low' and 'low' and doesn't really give
> specific values.

printer.ink_level.percentage = {80, 45} (strlist) [optional]
printer.ink_level.description = {"good", "low"} (strlist) [optional]

or if a driver provides percentage, maybe we can infer .description and
vice versa:

if percentage > 70 then description = good
else description = low

(you get the idea)

> also libinklevel could do with using some of the information from HAL
> in order to fill in some of the missing information that may be
> required, such as number of cartrides, cartride names and any options
> that may modify the request. 

We can merge this via fdi files, altho "what side provides what" would
have to be carefully managed (i.e. the addon provides this
automatically, and the fdi provides the other stuff)

I think we should start to formulate a patch to the spec, and then work
on an addon that adheres to the spec.
It also lets us argue about the key names and the methods before anyone
starts writing any addon code.

So, what other stuff can libinklevel provide that is sane to expose in
the hal device tree?

Thanks,

Richard.