[Openicc] Linux CM ideology .. Linux CM proposal

[edmund ronald]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 3:39 AM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
> On Feb 8, 2011, at 4:12 PM, edmund ronald wrote:
>
>> Chris,
>>
>> The problem here is the enthusiast. A printer will last longer than a
>> comp, say 4 years, and a user will have 1 to 20 or so packs of paper
>> floating around his house. The desktop guys can give us a media-choice
>> interface as a pulldown for each printer queue, or we can have
>> separate queues, or all of the above.
>>
>> I don't think that anything like today's Gutenprint interface or even
>> Apple's is feasible to inflict on the user any longer. In fact I heard
>> some print guy called Chris say that he finds the Gutenprint interface
>> confusing :)
>
> I was thinking of the portion of the interface that Gutenprint does not control or affect. The part where you select printers (queues), and also presets. So the Gutenprint issue is of course related to all of the UI questions, but it's also a separate thing than making a print dialog more organized. Keep in mind I'm coming from a Mac OS mentality: OS provides queues and presets and some panels like number of copies, paper source (tray), mirroring, rotation, and then the printer PPD provides printer specific options.
>
> I still think the enthusiast is better off with a commercial product than building something for a (market potential wise) a small number of people that requires a lot of engineering effort to make it more presentable to such a workflow. Maybe I'm wrong on these counts.
>

I don't think it's a question of wrong or right, it's how these things
come into being. People here who are discussing the subtleties of
renderings in Poppler, and the profile issues, will be using the
complex facilities first and then simplifying them down - this has
always been the Linux progression anyway, the early adopters are
techies. Look at Argyll - many of these guys using it are doing
complex stuff, in fact more complex than would be possible with
commercial packages.

 So I think you should help design an interface that works for
enthusiasts, make sure it actually is useful, and then hand out some
well-deserved kicks to the behind to make sure a simplified interface
is incorporated when the boys have played enough with their new toy.

Edmund