[Fwd: Re: [Desktop_architects] Presentation slides - with attachedtemplates]

Bastian, Waldo waldo.bastian at intel.com
Tue Dec 20 13:03:47 PST 2005


>Till Kamppeter wrote:
>> Michael Sweet wrote:
>>>
>>>     2. Use the supplied APIs to get the available drivers and
>>>        devices.  Right now each distro seems to be maintaining
>>>        their own (insert your buzzword) database of printer
>>>        drivers rather than asking CUPS for a list of printer
>>>        drivers it knows about.  The result is that each GUI
>>>        provides a different list of drivers/devices than the
>>>        other or the CUPS web interface, which is confusing.
>>>        Why do we want to confuse the user?!?
>>>
>>
>> So we (distro printing maintainers) all should
>>
>> - Take care that all PPDs which manufacturers supply as free software
>>   are part of the distro (I have included all from linuxprinting.org
in
>>   the foomatic-db package hoping that they slip into the distros
>>   automatically then).
>>
>> - Pre-build the Foomatic PPDs with "foomatic-compiledb" and do not
use
>>   the XML database in production systems (consider the XML as source
>>   code). Then the web interface and the GUI tools will expose exactly
>>   the same model list. GUI tools can be simplified to use only one
>>   method for obtaining model list (PPDs from CUPS).
>
>Actually, with CUPS 1.2 you can write a small driver interface
>program that provides enumeration and generation of the PPD files
>from your XML database.  I expect we'll be able to do something
>similar with future Gutenprint releases as well (basically the
>"genppd" program will become a CUPS driver interface program)

Which particular CUPS APIs should distributions be using to access the
CUPS driver information? Would relying on the XML database not be too
slow in many cases? I notice that both Yast and KDEPrint for example
maintain their own cache of printer models.

Cheers,
Waldo




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