[Openicc] Re: Hello *and* (was): LINUX, Gutenprint / CUPS / Color policies

[Graeme Gill]

Chris Murphy wrote:
> I do not believe the driver should be determining whether or not to 
> convert a file at all. This arbitration should be done by the OS. All 
> the OS needs to know is whether the application has already prematched 
> the data, or not.  If it has, do nothing. If it hasn't, then boolean 
> conditions apply to determine if and how to color manage the print file 
> (based in part on print dialog settings), and then finally rasterizing 
> and sending it off to the driver for whatever its going to do 
> (proprietary color management or not, resampling, sharpening, screening, 
> etc.)

It's a matter of semantics. By some views, the driver is "part of the OS".
In the tagged view of color, every element that handles color data
has some mechanism available to convert from the colorspace the data
is in, to the colorspace that processing element needs it in to do its job.
This conversion could be handled almost transparently by other
OS elements, or might be quite explicit within the print driver.
A printer driver (in the broad sense) has a primary job of seeing
that the graphic information it is given, is transformed into a
form suitable for the printing device. Making sure (by whatever
underlying mechanism) that the color space is correct for the
printer is fundamental.

Graeme Gill.