[Gnome-print] GNOME print solution is more simple is we divide it by 2

[Juantomas Garcia <juantomas disoft es>]

I begin to think that we're seeing the problems in a bad view.
Lets me explain it. We need to make a clear separation of the
problems or we will lost the point. There are different kind of problems
and we're trying to solve all as a unique solutions. None of the actual
OS system can solve it fine. So now it time to be creative and try to
solve it (we can do it guys).

First problem the printer technologies.

All the printer have it good part and the
bad part. Ones are good for raster graphics (PCL
ESCP/2) and anothers are great for text/vectorial (PS).
This_is_not_a_problem_of_architecture OK.
The designer of each driver must be put all the
knowhow of the printer in the driver in order
to make the best driver to talk and optimize the
printer. Some kind of printers are bad for print
graphics or text and you cann't request more
that the printer have. That's a problem of
the owner of the printer and when you buy a
printer you must know what what will you do
with it.

Second Problem. The type of the printing
topology.

In a superior level above the printer driver
must be is the print job is local or throw
a print server. If the printing is local I'm
not see any noticiable problem for GNOME-Print
all the question go to the driver space. In the
networking printing, the user (or the administrator
must choice if client will use metafile or raw output).
I'm sure that the most eficient way is send a kind
of compressed metafile and the spooler in the other
side must be sufficient clever to use locally the
native driver of the printer to "play the metafile".
But anyway the administrator can be choice to sature
the network with the worst case raw data of every driver.

The moral of this very long and ugly english wrote
message is that we don't need to reinvent the wheel
and we have almost _all_ the pieces to make a great
printing architecture if no wasting more time in
flames ;-)

Cheers
Juantomás




----------------------------------------------------------
Juantomás García        Comite Organizador Expo-Linux 2001
http://www.disoft.es    http://www.expo-linux.com
http://www.lared.es