[Fwd: Re: AW: [Desktop_printing] Role of CUPS and error handling]

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Apr 3 08:50 Michael Sweet wrote (shortened):
> Johannes Meixner wrote:
> > ...
> > I cannot imagine any problems regarding usability here.

I meant only usability (i.e. from the end-users point of view).

 
> OK, problems with this approach:
> 
>     1. It doesn't work for platforms other than Linux

I had only Linux in mind.
The manufacturers would have to do it different for other OSs.


>     2. It doesn't allow for version detection/dependencies; Linux
>        distributors ship a wide range of CUPS versions, some of
>        which are missing key features that vendors need

I had only "normal" printer support in mind.
If for example a printer cannot work in unidirectional mode,
the manufacturer could provide for example a special backend
which provides the bidirectional mode or this weak printer model
is simply not supported in CUPS 1.1.x

By the way: What about "cups-config --version"?


>     3. It requires each vendor to develop their own setup
>        applications,

Yes, this is a crucial point of the idea.
But I didn't mean a big-and-fat arbitrary-printer setup application.
I have something like a bash-script in mind.
Only the manufacturer knows what exactly he needs to set up
his one particular printer model.
With this knowledge he can make a setup script which tests all
what is needed and therefoere which will not show any user dialog
except for fatal error messages after which the tool must exit.
Then only a very generic message-popup with an [ok] button
(e.g. "xmessage" if X is running) is sufficient.


Kind Regards,
Johannes Meixner
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