[Openicc] What is exactly needed: Embedded Profile in CUPS raster !!

[Michael Sweet]

On Jun 2, 2011, at 3:53 AM, Kai-Uwe Behrmann wrote:
> On 02.06.2011 12:19, Richard Hughes wrote:
>> On 2 June 2011 10:58, Kai-Uwe Behrmann <ku.b at gmx.de> wrote:
>>> I dont say " Choose Profile -> Implies Printer Settings paradigm" should
>>> be the only one. Its just important to have in the toolbox.
>> In my opinion it's fundamentally flawed. An ICC profile is not a
> 
> ICC profile selection is a part of the freedom of choice. I do not see
> anything flaw in this idea. Thats of course different from providing
> only particial freedom like source code to a GUI without selection
> options. IMO the later one is flawed as it only talkes about freedom,
> but in reallity takes freedom away by making learning and customising
> extremely difficult.

The challenge is providing the right amount of freedom for the user. Too much and your UI is confusing or scary - Gutenprint is an example of this. Too little and your UI is just a toy and unusable by advanced/expert users.

On Mac OS X we disclose things in levels; in the print dialog there is a "simple" view where you can pick printers, presets, and a couple other content-specific things and an expanded view that provides categorized options. I can't claim this is perfect (and I'm sure others will jump on specific color management issues here), but you can ultimately select a color profile at print time if you want. If you don't, the default profile is used based on the options (or preset) you have chosen.

The ICC profile selector should not be a top-level UI element in the print dialog. Nobody besides an expert (and even then, not all experts) knows what to do with it, and even the experts will make use of presets/saved settings to minimize the amount of time spent in the print dialog.

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Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair