[Desktop_printing] PPD settings vs IPP options

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Thursday 09 February 2006 18:39, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On 2/9/06, Kurt Pfeifle <k1pfeifle at gmx.net> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > Based on the user's print option selections, the "UI" needs only to
> >  generate a  commandline for CUPS to act on, specifying the PPD options
> > (as well as other, generic, not-printer-specific options!) in the same
> > format as you would on a CUPS "lp" or "lpr" commandline (some options'
> > values may be boolean boolean):
> >
> > -o optionname1=value1 -o optionname2=value2 ....
> 
> Using a commandline as interface here seems very wrong.

Sure. Read my full mail. Further below I had said:

   Of course, for writing a GUI frontend to CUPS printing 
   clients (what is equivalent to lp & lpr commands), you'd 
   use the appropriate parts of the CUPS API.

   The above "commandline" usage of CUPS is just listed 
   to illustrate the general idea...

So I used the commandline examples to show what kind of stuff 
the CUPS API provides -- everybody, even non-programmers, can 
reproduce this without first writing a proof-of-concept GUI,
or studying the API documentation first.

It is very obvious to me that most desktop developers do not 
have a lot of clue about printing in general, or PostScript, 
IPP and CUPS specifically (and this is not meant as an insult
-- it is/was just not "sexy" enough for most to put effort in,
not even for understanding the details about how it works). 
At least this is true for 99% of KDE hackers I know (hmmm...
do I know at least 100?). If this is different for other parts
of the OSS movement, my apologies.  :-)

> Matthias

Cheers,
Kurt