[Printing-summit] [OpenICC] Device Settings in ICC

Graeme Gill graeme at argyllcms.com
Mon Sep 4 21:53:16 PDT 2006


Robert L Krawitz wrote:

> A printing (for example) dialog would then lock the settings for these
> particular adjustments if the user specifies a profile containing this
> tag, and allow the user to modify other settings that the driver
> doesn't specify to be locked.  This is why I've copied it to
> printing-summit -- there's a discussion taking place right now about
> printing dialogs.

That's a viable approach, but leaves the user with a rather
non-intuitive means of choosing settings - they have to
search for a profile that has settings they want, and
choose it.
A more flexible approach allows the user to specify any setting
they want, and finds a best matching profile to suite. You can
finesse this with something to indicate the degree of fit, and
ability to then load the settings from the profile for a perfect
match. They may not want a perfect match, they may just want
the best color that can be managed with those settings.

> One complexity is that most printing dialogs are currently controlled
> by PPD files; it's hard to see how this would be integrated in any
> general way with PPD files.  The alternative would be to break from
> PPD files and move toward a more programmatic interface, which I would
> personally prefer but which will make life more complicated for
> applications that provide their own PPD-based printing dialogs.

Dynamic PPDs are a halfway house to this, but a really good UI
needs two way information from the driver & device - how else
can you communicate the current state of a device to the user ?

Graeme Gill.




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