[Openicc] ALL YOU NEED IS A PROFILE, THE MYTH. (WAS CC Profiles In X Specification and dispwin)

[Robert Krawitz]

   Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:28:11 +0100
   From: "edmund ronald" <edmundronald at gmail.com>

   On Jan 17, 2008 11:33 PM, Graeme Gill <graeme at argyllcms.com> wrote:
   > Robert Krawitz wrote:
   Graeme,

   I think it's time to help me explain to the Gutenprint/CUPS crowd
   that they now have working drivers which the domain experts can
   improve themselves IF GIVEN THE ABILITY TO DO SO. Which means
   parameters OUTSIDE the C code.

OK, this is actually helpful here -- the key being that you believe
the core driver does have the necessary facilities, and we have to
figure out how to expose them appropriately.  Thanks.

   Which means that hard-coded stuff inside the C files should be
   deprecated, and a documented CENTRAL FILE containing all ink and
   dot-related parameters should be made available, AT LEAST FOR
   EXPERIMENTAL PURPOSES so people can construct and experiment with
   front-ends eg. GUIs and with the parameters which make the existing
   engine work best. Oh, and by the way there is such a thing as XML
   which has been created exactly for this purpose of creating
   portable (parameter) files which are both machine readable and
   human debuggable.

The current scheme's a big improvement over 4.2, but it was clearly a
mistake to continue to leave all the tuning stuff embedded in C code.
That said, that mistake's going to be at the very least quite
time-consuming to undo, particularly if we try to do anything fancier
than create some kind of raw XML dump of the current baked-in
database.

I will see what I can do with this, but I don't think it can be solved
overnight.

   As you and others have pointed out, profiles and device links can
   iron out a lot of issues. It's really getting necessary for users
   to be let loose on this thing and deal themselves with inks and
   linearisation, rather than spending forever deciding which arcane
   feature should be buried in the C code at the next revision.