Re: Driver for native XPS printers urgently needed

So, first, *pages* are not converted to a TIFF in xpswrite. Elements of 
pages are converted to TIFF images - those will be elements that are not 
(directly) supported in the XPS imaging model, like PDF transparency 
(although, due to the way PDF transparency works, most pages containing 
transparency do result in a single image in the output), or other 
elements that the XPS device does not currently handle.

Secondly, I don't *think* the TIFFs are pegged to 96dpi, I think the 
resolution listed in the TIFF files themselves ignores the scaling 
applied at the PDL level. The device does honor the resolution option 
given on the gs command line.

Thirdly, for colors, properly supporting multiple color spaces could be 
very complex (I'm not entirely sure), but we may be able to, relatively 
easily, include an ICC profile in the XPS, thus allowing decent quality 
conversion by the target.

Lastly, we've got practically no engineering resource available now or 
in the foreseeable future - there's a lot we'd like to do to improve 
xpswrite, but unless something changes quite radically, we certainly 
won't get much of significance done in that area for 9.19.

Chris


On 11/10/15 19:58, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Hi,
>
> in the segment of high-end laser printers there is a trend to XPS-only
> printers and this is a well-known protocol/PDL (Ghostscript/GhostPDL can
> be used with it, as both input and output format). Therefore it should
> be possible to develop a working generic XPS printer driver soon.
>
> I got aware of this by this thread on the CUPS user mailing list:
>
> Printing to native XPS printers using CUPS
>
> on
>
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/thread.html
>
> or
>
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027167.html
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027168.html
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027171.html
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027172.html
> http://www.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2015-October/027173.html
>
> Ghostscript has already an "xpswrite" output device, but the device is
> missing the needed flexibility. Pages are converted to Tiff with 96 dpi
> for sending, Only RGB color is available as color space, ...
>
> I want to request as a new feature for GS 9.19 that Ghostscript's
> "xpswrite" device gets a real printer driver where you can choose a
> resolution, color/bw, ...
>
> Then I would add a gstoxps filter to cups-filters and a PPD for a
> "Generic XPS printer" to not need to list such printers as Paperweight
> and make it difficult for users to print from Linux on modern printers.
>
> WDYT?
>
>     Till
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