Re: An Idea...

[Sergey Zhumatiy <serg asi srcc msu su>]

Kent Schumacher wrote:

>
> I agree that the standard print file format is (and should continue to be) postscript.
> What is lacking is a common facility for providing font metrics and printer capabilities
> (i.e. fonts available on printers, paper bins, double siding printing, paper sizes, etc...).

  Did you try to write an graphical application and let to add printing capability?
  I did. This mean, that all graphical functions are implemented as switch: are we
drawing or printing? Then we call X-Window sequence or PS sequence... This
makes code more difficult (and if I try to ADD printing feature this is terribly!),
not so efficient, and slow it (not so much, but it does...).
  I agree, that PostScript is standart of printing de facto, and it is _good_ standart.
  But why WinWord does not generate PostScript _for printing_? Or QuarkXpress,
or PhotoShop? They can save files in postscript. But they print trough standart
drivers.
  Can you turn on econofast mode on printer with PS? Or using photopaper?
Or something like?

> We need a repository where all this info is available so that applications can simply
> query a print description api and use it to correctly format documents.

  And may be set they owns options!

> We also need an api to the print control system so that we can have a rich set of
> print job management tools.
>
> A starter for these api's would be Java's  PrinterJob, Printable, and PageFormat classes.
>
> Kent

  With respect

                                                   Serg.