Re: [Gimp-print-devel] Gutenprint Printer Application (Native)

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

On 9/22/21 12:53 PM, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> On 21/09/2021 17:01, Michael Sweet wrote:
>> Till,
>>
>> The point should not be to propagate hundreds or thousands of printer-specific knobs to trip up
>> the user (even expert users!)

I disagree.  I'm fine with a simplified UI for people who don't want to do anything fancy, and I'm
fine with that containing a basic set of resolutions.  But it's very important to me that people who
want to do advanced things should be able to without jumping through gratuitous hoops.

Re your comment in a previous message that "it would be a pain to scroll through that many options
(in one long list) on a phone", phones aren't likely to have a Gutenprint port, and iPhones
definitely won't (due to app store policies).  And I don't propose one long list of options,
about:config style

>> It makes more sense to provide a Gutenprint-specific web UI that allows (expert) users to do test
>> prints and tweak those knobs. Once you are happy with the settings, save them with a name ("Bob's
>> Photo Preset") and expose the presets as single vendor extension attribute, which then shows up in
>> the print dialog.
>
> Makes much more sense to me.

How would this work?  Where would the web server run?  This sounds like it would make life very
complicated for people who want to do advanced things, just so that people who only want to do
simple printing don't get curious about an "Advanced Options" box, check it, then get overwhelmed by
what's available.

I have no problem with presets, certainly.  The GIMP plugin does this and it has always worked fine.
 What I don't want is for someone to have to use a separate application to create them that either
needs a web server on the local machine (with all the security problems that go with that) or that
they need to be online for to connect to some cloud infrastructure that has to be maintained.

> In the retro-fitting Gutenprint Printer Application I will continue with the simplified PPDs for
> now, as the retro-fit is an interim solution where we should not spend too much time on.
> 
> I suggest for the native GutenPrint Printer Application an additional web interface page for the
> printers (as I did with the PostScript Printer Application where I have added "Device Settings" to
> configure the installable accessories).
> 
> One could add an "Advanced Settings" page, where one can set all these extra options, with tabs for
> the logical groups of the options, a better way to adjust numeric values (instead of 2 enumerated
> choices for coarse and fine adjustment), buttons for saving the settings under a name (preset), for
> switching between prsets, removing/renaming/copying/cloning presets. And if there is at least one
> preset, the "Printing Defaults" get an "Advanced Settings" vendor option, where one can choose
> between "Default" and each of the save presets.

The "coarse" and "fine" adjustments are a hack due to the lack of an appropriate facility in PPD
files.  In the GIMP plugin there's none of that; it's just a bunch of sliders