Re: printkit source related reorganization

Am 22.07.2008 um 21:17 schrieb Jovan Ivankovic:

> I have one dilemma, how should user preferred configuration of each  
> installed printer be saved, I mean in which format.

Do you mean job and page settings? These are stored in a BMessage and  
the print_server persists it already for each pair of installed  
printer and printing application.

In printer driver hook functions (see http://www.haiku-os.org/documents/dev/how_to_write_a_printer_driver)
   BMessage* config_page(BNode* spool_folder, BMessage* settings);
   BMessage* config_job(BNode* spool_folder, BMessage* settings);
you receive a previous BMessage settings (can be empty at first) and  
return the new settings.

You could add PPD related settings into a new BMessage ppdSettings and  
add that to the provided settings, like (from memory):
BMessage ppdSettings;
ppdSettings.AddString("key", "value");
...
currentSettings.AddMessage("ppd", ppdSettings);


> Should we use XML for that? If it is so, is there some kind of  
> library that already works on beos/haiku, I should i write a simple  
> parser for those files too?

If you mean other settings I would prefer to also use a BMessage and  
de/serialize that from/to a file or into an attribute of the  
spool_folder.
For XML there is a parser in src/libs/expat, you can find other  
libraries too at www.bebits.com, don't know if there is more in the  
Haiku tree.

> Also, I could use some help with UI Design, I mean some kind of  
> sketches or mockups.

I think at first it suffices to add the current contents of the job  
settings dialog into a new tab and add another tab for the PPD related  
settings.
The UI of libprint has to be reworked later anyway, this should not be  
your primary focus.

> I think I almost dealt with all the JCL keywords problems. I'm using  
> your TODO.txt list as reference of things that needs to be done for  
> PPD.

Great. Maybe I can try to build CUPS on Haiku sometime in the next  
three weeks.

- Michael
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