[Openicc] Gutenprint team requests CM-off for a print queue be provided as a maintained engineering facility.

[Chris Murphy]

On May 11, 2012, at 6:48 PM, edmund ronald wrote:

> With all due courtesy, at Gutenprint I have the impression we're the
> guys who have been creating those PPDs in the first place for quite
> some time. If we cannot be expected to have apps that write them, who
> else?

Do you know that a PPD solution actually produces the behavior you're asking for? What are the alternatives? Since I don't know the mechanism by which a PPD based off switch would actually "message" Ghostscript, this is speculative.

On May 11, 2012, at 7:07 PM, edmund ronald wrote:

> The distinction is that we are not advocating that a feature be made
> available to future users, we are requesting it for ourselves ASAP so
> that there will actually be a system to give to future users.

I'm unconvinced a Gutenprint specific solution is appropriate. What about CUPS filters development? Is the proposed PPD method adequate for them? How is it to be documented? What about pass through devices? I think we have ever reason to believe those are becoming more common, both PDF and XPS based.

It seems to me the print spool needs to contain the correct instructions from the outset. Not additional metadata that says "ignore what's in the print spool, i.e. disable transforms".

Robert said yesterday:
> We want an option -- a user-level option, on a par with others such as paper size, media type, and resolution -- to do this.  Not an API that requires application modification.


So why does a CLI tool, e.g.:

printtarget -f <targetfilename> -p <ppd configuration file> -d <device>

not meet the requirement? Why modify all PPDs to achieve the result you're after, and thereby cause a box to be rendered in the print UI? That just gets you a switch that you then also have to use. A CLI tool can ensure this is done each time correctly, and it's scriptable. If your configuration file really contains every bit of detail for printing including orientation, size, margins, centering, scaling, etc. doesn't seem like you need a dialog to print.

Chris Murphy