[Desktop_printing] PPD settings vs IPP options

[McDonald, Ira]

Hi Michael,

But if your GUI is _based_ on PPDs (as seems to be the concensus
on this mailing list - not my first choice), then the dynamically
discovered published IPP Printer object attributes have to be
converted into a PPD for the local API interface - limiting the
presented choices in that PPD for paper sizes implies an expert
piece of conversion software, it seems.

Cheers,
- Ira


Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
PO Box 221  Grand Marais, MI  49839
phone: +1-906-494-2434
email: imcdonald at sharplabs.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Sweet [mailto:mike at easysw.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 9:21 AM
> To: McDonald, Ira
> Cc: 'Robert L Krawitz'; kpfeifle at danka.de;
> desktop_printing at lists.osdl.org
> Subject: Re: [Desktop_printing] PPD settings vs IPP options
> 
> 
> McDonald, Ira wrote:
> > ...
> > I'm aware of shipping production printers that publish over
> > 300 supported paper sizes via the IPP 'media-col' collection
> > attribute, each with 10 descriptive attributes, and sometimes
> > several instances (for different colors or whatever).
> 
> There is some precedent for limiting the list of choices
> a user sees to a subset; for example, on Windows you won't
> see the large format sizes unless you enable them.  IIRC,
> MacOS X limits the list of media sizes as well (and then
> remembers when you add sizes of interest).
> 
> > Excerpted from the IEEE-ISTO PWG "IPP Production Printing
> > Attributes - Set 1" (PWG 5100.3-2001):
> > 
> > 3.13 media-col (collection) - augments IPP "media"
> > 3.13.1 media-key (type3 keyword | name(MAX))
> > 3.13.2 media-type (type3 keyword | name(MAX))
> > 3.13.3 media-info (text(255))
> > 3.13.4 media-color (type3 keyword | name(MAX))
> > 3.13.5 media-pre-printed (type3 keyword | name(MAX))
> > 3.13.6 media-hole-count (integer(0:MAX))
> > 3.13.7 media-order-count (integer(1:MAX))
> > 3.13.8 media-size (collection)
> > 3.13.9 media-weight-metric (integer(0:MAX))
> > 3.13.10 media-front-coating (type3 keyword | name(MAX)) and 
> >         media-back-coating (type3 keyword | name(MAX))
> > 3.13.11 media-recycled (type3 keyword | name(MAX))
> > 
> > Expressing all that (with ordered constraints) in PPDs is
> > going to _real_ ugly.
> 
> That's why we don't convert from IPP attributes to PPDs, but the
> other way 'round.
> 
> -- 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
> Internet Printing and Document Software          http://www.easysw.com
>