[Gnome-print] GNOME, KDE: spool system access

[Waldo Bastian <bastian kde org>]

Hiya, 

I am Waldo Bastian and one of KDE's core developers. I am currently looking 
into ways to improve KDE's integration with the printing spool system. I 
guess that both GNOME and KDE have more or less the same requirements in this 
areas, either now or in the future, so it would be nice if we could 
coordinate both efforts in this area a little.

For KDE we are considering to adopt Corel's sysAPS ( System and Application 
Print Services). From what I understand this library basically abstracts the 
access to the underlying printing system and provides access to information 
about printer-capabilities. 

To quote:

"This project, driven by Corel, provides a unified API for accessing 
printing-specific services outside the realm of the graphics API. This 
includes querying & controlling features of a given printer model, sending 
jobs, accessing queues and configuration."

sysAPS is under LGPL, is written in C and has both a C as well as an optional 
 C++ API. It is a rather young project so it should not be a problem to adapt 
to any specific wishes in the API. You can find them at 
http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=2328.

It doesn't seem to put any constraints on the contents of the print-stream so 
you should be able to feed it with postscript as well as any other format.

My question is whether GNOME has any ideas in this area, whether sysAPS would 
be a viable option for GNOME, or whether GNOME is considering other solutions.

GNOME's adoption of sysAPS would be an incencitive for KDE to adopt it as 
well.

Cheers,
Waldo