Re: Gtk+ printing dialog highlevel thoughts

[Michael R Sweet <mike easysw com>]

Alexander Larsson wrote:
> ...
> > Solaris ships PAPI.  Doesn't ship CUPS.
>
> Hmm, yet another library. Easily mistaken with PAPI the "Performance
> Application Programming Interface" library too.
>
> So, exactly what does PAPI give us? Is it good enough to allow us to
> write the gtk+ print dialog with it? Does it e.g. expose PPD file info
> like custom UI for printer features?

As Laca has already provided links, I'll just add that right now
PAPI only provides a generic printing interface with basic support
for options as defined by IPP.  There was some discussion for
follow-on work to define additional attributes so that you could,
for example, export all of the options and UI from a PPD file as
attributes.  None of that follow-on work has been done.

So, what you'll get from PAPI is a slightly better set of information
to customize the existing GNOME print dialog (i.e. a standard way to
get a list of printers, jobs, etc. along with the supported media
sizes, duplex modes, resolutions, and so forth), but not enough to
provide support for all of the current driver features.  If you end
up supporting multiple print system backends, it is sufficient as a
backup for platforms that don't have CUPS or some other full-featured
printing system, but it would not be my first choice...

Mind you, I *am* the guy behind CUPS so my opinions are somewhat
biased, however I am also one of the people behind PAPI and am still
interested in expanding PAPI to support everything that is needed in
a more printing-system-neutral way.

--
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com