Re: [Gnome-print] Re: RFC: A draft proposal ...

[Chema Celorio <chema celorio com>]

Damien Diederen wrote:
> While I agree that GhostScript rasterizing is not always perfect, I wonder
> if this is not "fixable". Is the GhostScript codebase unmaintainable ?
> 
> This would also improve the print quality for the vast number of users that
> are using GhostScript to print on their non-PostScript printers with
> 
> I don't quite grasp why a GhostScript/Libart frankeinstein couldn't serve
> our need (the extension could be described in the XPD, and emulation
> 

several reasons, from the top of my mind :

- we don't own/mantain the ghostcript code, we don't have
the freedom to develop as we do with our own api.
- ghostcript is not a full api as gnome-print is
(i.e. gnome_print_dialog_new() , gnome_print_add_copies_to_dailog() )
- we cant inlcude dependencies as we can with gnome-print
- we need it to be gtk/gnome specific, which ghostcript is not
since we are going to do dialogs, spooling etc.
- print preview 
- gnome-print is allready a cool api on it's own
 ....

> Special printer features -> Described in the XPD file -> 'Proprietary'
> GhostScript extensions ('5 gs_hp2000c_set_media_type' anyone ?).
> 
> Alpha channel support --> PostScript printer -> Alpha emulation
>                       `-> Described in the XPD file -> 'Proprietary' gs
> extensions (0.5 1 0 0 gs_setrgbacolor).
> 
> Colorspaces -> handled by the PostScript interpreter level 2+

I know you can do this, my point was :
"I don't see how Postcript is an advantage regarding this issue"
meaning :why is postcritp BETTER for this v.s. gnome-print ?

chema