Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Imprimante Epson

[Solomon P. <pi...@sh...>]

On Mon, Dec 09, 2019 at 01:59:40PM -0600, Matt Broughton wrote:
> I think most Mac users would just abandon Gutenprint.  They shout, 
> curse, and/or ask what the heck are they referring to?  

If moving to macports/homebrew results in something that reduces our 
support/maintainence burden (eg wider OS platform support, simpler 
release process, and so forth) that might arguably be a net benefit.

Consider how much handholding we have to do already; it's no 
exaggeration to say that nearly all of the dyesub support requests I 
field come from Mac users who upgraded (well) beyond their printer 
maker's driver support, often bringing expectations of OEM-quality 
polish/tools and support.  (Most of the rest come from folks tend to 
relate to obsolete Gutenprint versions on the likes of Raspberry Pi 
systems)

Meanwhile, nearly every MacOS release has broken something about 
Gutenprint or its release/packaging process, and the next version 
post-Catalina is expected to completely drop support for traditional 
CUPS drivers altogether, making Gutenprint pretty much useless for Mac 
users until we manage to build a "printing application" instead.

It's ... a mess, and if macports/homebrew can make it easier for us, we 
should at least consider it..

> I would just buy cheap, throw away printers or use a linux install 
> under virtual machine.  < /soapbox>

Unfortunately, in the niche that Gutenprint occupies, there are no cheap 
throaway printers.  But yeah, I've recommend the VM approach (or the use 
of the likes of a Raspberry Pi) on multiple occasions.

 - Solomon
-- 
Solomon Peachy			       pizza at shaftnet dot org
High Springs, FL                          ^^ (email/xmpp) ^^
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.