Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Printer Applications - The new architecture for Gutenprint

[Robert K. <rl...@al...>]

On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 12:46:28 +0200, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> On 01/10/2019 04:55, Robert Krawitz wrote:
>>> SANE is not really needed here, as we do not want to do a
>>> wrapper/converter Printer Application as it was created in this
>>> year's Google Summer of Code but a native one. As PPDs get
>>> eliminated, SANE will also get eliminated.
>> 
>> Front ends maybe (just like our GIMP plugin will at best lose a lot of
>> its raison d'etre), but the backends won't.
>
> I mean that within the Printer Application the SANE frontend/backend
> interface is not necessarily needed. One could make the application
> directly talk to the scanner.

Sure; the Gutenprint GIMP plugin will also go away.  But a good
backend interface will surely make writing the scanner part of the
printing application easier.

> A PDF renderer is not needed at all by the Printer
> Application. There are driverless IPP printers around which do not
> understand PDF, they only accept one or more of the raster formats
> Apple Raster, PWG Raster, and/or PCLm.So you let your Printer
> Application emulate such a raster-only printer. Then you only need
> to convert the incoming raster data to the raster format of the
> actual printer using libgutenprint. No PDF interpreter and no fonts
> needed.

OK, good enough.

>>> My recommendation is to do the Printer Application for Gutenprint as
>>> a part of the Gutenprint project, even if we connect to scanner
>>> drivers with SANE in the beginning, as most of the driver part comes
>>> from Gutenprint and scanning should be sooner or later move over
>>> from SANE to Gutenprint.
>>>
>>> Also not all of these components need to be done at once. Most
>>> important is the printing support (part 1 and 2). The other
>>> components can be added later.
>> 
>> I agree with starting there.  But I'd much rather the scanning experts
>> do the scanning work.  If there has to be a single app for both
>> printing and scanning, maybe it would make more sense for that to be a
>> third project (or a joint project between SANE and Gutenprint).  We
>> can surely kick that particular can down the road for a while, though.
>> 
>
> I think joint Gutenprint/SANE project would be the best here.
>
> In the end you emulate an IPP multi-function device which does both
> printing and scanning.

Yes, that makes sense.  I should probably bring this up on the SANE
devel list at some point.
-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rl...@al...>

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