Re: Updates?

Hi Karsten!

IMO this discussion started unfortunate. I first thought we were
talking about refactoring the current print kit. Obviously I missed
the point where you were talking about the new API meaning the API for
R2.

Before we can discuss the API we should define a feature set, based on
that we can then talk about the API.

The features I could extract from this thread are:
Karsten:
- Show preview from job setup dialog.
- Save PDF to file from job setup dialog.
- Integrate application and print settings into page/job setup dialog.
BTW only the last one requires an API change (= new printer driver
interface, should wait for R2).

Philippe:
- Persistent print settings per printer (IIRC printer_server does this already
  but on a printer _and_ application level, as I tried to explain in a
previous email).

Please correct me and add more that I missed or that you have planned.

BTW replacing print_server with CUPS is not a feature per se ;-)

And before we think about implementing it we should finalize R1 first.
There are some things that should be improved, for example (somewhat
ordered by priority):
- The preview window still does not have a tool bar.
- The user interface of libprint should be improved.
- The PS printer driver should generated vectorized output.
  ATM it creates a number of raster images only, which is
  somewhat OK if the output goes to a printer or even CUPS.
  But for sure you do not want to convert that to a PDF file.
  I wish you good luck implementing the more advanced features
  of our PDF printer driver, like extracting links or the outline
  from a print job.
  And there is also the issue that the Interface Kit graphics model
  is (or was) not 100% compatible with PS graphics model,
  at the time of the implementation PDF graphics model was much
  better in this regard.
  So to work around that you end up rasterizing everything
  that can not be reproduced otherwise.
- The PS driver should support PPD.
- If we want CUPS to (ab)use as a "printer driver" a libprint
  based printer driver should be implemented that generates
  the CUPS native "raster" format. This should also support PPD.
- and for sure more I forgot.

I would really wish that, if you have the time and motivation, you
could complete to open tasks first, before you start with the next
step of defining and implementing an API for R2. This would be more in
the spirit of Haiku. I am sorry that I cannot keep my motivation long
enough to do that myself. But I really think that improving the R1
experience is more important now, than starting the planning phase for
R2 already.

Cheers,
Michael