[Openicc] New options on the mainline

[Hal V. Engel]

On Sunday 20 January 2008 02:29:45 edmund ronald wrote:
> On Jan 20, 2008 9:54 AM, Kai-Uwe Behrmann <ku.b at gmx.de> wrote:
> > Thanks for switching to a new thread subject. To be honest, I was not
> > convinced with complete capitalisation in the subject line for the sake
> > of repeating ideas.
>
> Oh, well, apologies then, for such capitalisation.
>
> I wish you guys would sit down and do persona scenarios to define
> Gutenprint's potential users. Here is a start, which indicates
> possible entry and exit reasons.
>
> - Gianni Entusiasto.
>  Gianni is 28, lives in Milano and he loves digital black and white
> photography which is so nostalgico. Unfortunately he only has an aging
> Epson A3 printer hooked on to an old iMac and pirate copy of Photoshop
> 7. But wait! Gianni has discovered the Gutenrpint-based Quadtone Rip
> (http://www.quadtonerip.com/html/QTRoverview.html) and now has started
> to print his own exhibition prints and done a show. But all is not
> perfect. Gianni would like to use some new media, but attempts to find
> third party profiles have failed, and Gianni may simply buy a new
> Epson and use the advanced B&W mode of the native driver in the
> future. And then Gianni won't need to bother his friend Carlo the
> computer expert anymore.

For all practical purposes Gianni is not a GutenPrint user.  Rather he is a 
QuadTone RIP user and to use this software he can not be using an open system 
(IE. he must be running a proprietary OS).  In this case it is the Quadtone 
RIP vendor who is the GutenPrint user and since he is making money by using 
GutenPrint he can afford to contribute back to the GutenPrint project either 
by supplying patches or offering bounties to add features he wants/needs.  
Has he done this?  This is likely a user scenario we should be talking about 
not Gianni's situation.  In fact this is analogous to viewing PhotoPrint as a 
GutenPrint user.

If Gianni is using the QuadTone RIP then why wouldn't he buy a EyeOne and use 
the linearization and profiling functions build into the QuafTone RIP? 
Besides this is proprietary software so how is this related to our open 
systems?   The only thing I see here that is relevent to this thread is that 
I learned that a vendor of proprietary software has build some linearization 
tools for B&W printing on top of the GutenPrint drivers.  This tells me that 
the GutenPrint drivers have most if not all of the functionality needed to 
implement a set of linearization front end tools.

Epson's native driver does not work on any of our open platforms.  What does 
this have to do with open systems other than pointing out that the GutenPrint 
R2400 (and other K7 printers) UI  is missing something comparable to Epson's 
advanced B&W mode?  I think this is really a UI issue since it appears to me 
that all of the low level hooks are available in the driver otherwise the 
QuadTone RIP guy would be SOL unless he has modified the drivers.  If he has 
modified the drivers for his own use and released this code in binary form 
then the GPL license that GutenPrint is released under requires the he make 
those changes available.  Robert what do you know about this?  Has he 
modified the drivers?

>
> - Tania Techkid
>  Tania is a 14 year old smart techie in a semi-detached near London.
> She loves Linux, and runs it exclusively on donated obsolete
> computers. Her room is full of ethernet cables  "Windows, blech!" is
> her mantra. So, no wonder  that when she prints out her digicam images
> she uses the Gimp and Gutenprint to drive an old inkjet which is fed
> with cheap third party ink. But her parents have decided to surprise
> Jane:  an iBook and a new bundled printer are going to be hers at her
> next birthday.

I don't use or have access to a Mac.  Perhaps you could some how connect this 
to GutenPrint linearization, ink curves and profiling for me?

>
> - George Labrat
>  George is a 24 year old grad student at the Mouse Institute of
> Technology. His lab runs tons of Unix boxen and Linux workstations.
> Students and faculty need to run off posters for presentations, and
> the lab has in the past purchased a wide-body printer for this
> purpose. This wide body started up hooked to a PC, but it's now run
> off Linux via a CUPS/Gutenprint spooler, and results are perfectly
> satisfying, with everybody very happy that the Windows box is gone.
> But the lab would like to get a new printer, and the latest models are
> unfortunately not supported by Gutenprint, so there is talk of using a
> Mac mini to drive the new model until Gutenprint can handle it.

The issue for this user appears to be about getting printer vendors to 
cooperate with the GutenPrint team so that their printers can be supported on 
our open systems.  Admittedly this is a significant problem but it is 
unrelated to the basic subject of this thread.  In addition, a user like 
George who is totally into Linux/UNIX would never even consider buying a 
printer that was not currently supported with either a production quality 
driver or a fairly stable beta level driver either an open source one like 
GutenPrint or from the vendor.  One of the first things that new Linux users 
learn to ask when considering the purchase of new hardware is "Are there 
drivers available or is this supported by the open source software I want to 
use?"  If the answer is no then that particular hardware is crossed off the 
list and the user looks elsewhere.

The more realistic scenario is the user who is converting to Linux or some 
other open system from a proprietary OS and is trying to get an existing 
unsupported printer to work.  99% of the things I see on the net where users 
are asking for help getting an unsupported printer (or other hardware) to 
work is this scenario.  

I should add that this issue is not limited to printers and is a significant 
issue for almost all classes of hardware.  A case that is relevent to this 
list is that spectrophotometer and color meter vendors have been and continue 
to be at best uncooperative with our efforts and some of these vendors are 
actually openly hostil toward the open source community and the situation has 
actually gotten worse over the last two years.

>
> Maybe three or four more scenarios would be worth looking at - but I
> think either I have limited imagination or the Gutenprint users aren't
> really mainstream, or maybe both.

It would appear to me that two of the three scenarios are totally unrelated to 
GutenPrint calibration/linearization/profiling and I am not sure if the third 
one is either but I simply do not know enough about OS/X to be able to say.

I do agree that there needs to be more focus on what users need but we need to 
look at scenarios and users that are more directly related to the topic of 
this thread.  For example,  there are two that are apparent to me.  

The first is the set of "users" you have called the "domain experts".  What 
exactly do they need to be able to do their job?  What exactly is that job?  
Who are these people and how are/will they be organized?  What is their 
relationship with the other projects that supply parts of the printing tool 
chain?  What tools do they need?  Who will design those tools and the 
interfaces of those tools to other parts of the printing tools chain?  Who 
will be responsible for implementing the various components to make those 
tools functional?  And so on.

The second group are users with high end printing needs.  Photographers, 
graphic artist and the like.  That might be "Gianni " if he were running an 
open OS.  What tools does he need.  What should those tools look like? And so 
on.

I guess that there is a third group of users.  These are users with lower 
expectations who "just want things to work".   Admittedly this would be most 
users.

Hal