[Openicc] Thoughts

[Chris Murphy]

On May 8, 2011, at 4:42 PM, James Cloos wrote:

> Is anyone here active in the IEEE’s PWG?
> 
> Among their other working groups, they are currently working on a
> specification for “cloud printing”¹.  The two interesting outcomes
> should be a strong takeup by the printer manufacturers of IPP over
> USB and the PWGRaster² format.  That combination should have a
> /significant/ positive impact on our needs.
> 
> It is very unlikely that there will be any significant use of the CPD
> except for legacy apps (which currently use lpr(1) or lp(1)) and as an
> example dialog the authors of frameworks like GTK and qt might use when
> designing their own print dialogs.  Ie, a separate application will not
> fly for most apps authors.
> 
> As such, we should not rely on or wait for the CPD.  Most of the use of
> the initialism CPD instead should specify “print dialog”.
> 
> (Which is not to suggest that the CPD should be abandoned or anything;
> it should be completed.  But we must be realistic about its future.)
> 
> 1] Please excuse the use of the marketing gobbledygook “cloud”.  Bleh.
> 
> 2] A proper subset of CUPSRaster.

I agree with this as well as Richard's concerns about over dependency on the CPD. We need to be thinking of how to enable ICC in all methods, including CPD, but not just CPD. I have big concerns with a major backtrack with color management when it comes to cloud and mobile printing right now. It's fine that for 95% of the market it will (likely) be sRGB based, but I still think we need to wedge ourselves in assertively to get better results than this for more discerning amateurs and professionals.

Chris Murphy