Re: [Omniprint-developer] Omni still very buggy

[Mark H. <ha...@us...>]

Hello Till,

I appreciate your feedback.

> 3. Foomatic: Names of options and choices: Both the machine-readable
> short names and the human-readable long names for options and choices
> should be as similar as possible to the Foomatic data of already
> existing drivers. This makes the Foomatic data of Omni more
> user-friendly and understandable and it also makes it easier to switch
> from an old GhostScript driver to Omni with the Foomatic tools, because
> the default settings of equally-named options with equally-named choices
> are conserved. In addition, the "lpr" command lines get shorter when one
> uses option and choice names as the already existing Foomatic drivers
> have. Foe example the paper size should have as long name "Page Size",
> as short name "PageSize" (this is already done) and the choices should
> not contain the prefix "FORM" and should not be all-uppercase. They
> should look like:
>
>    Short naame  Long name
>    ----------------------------
>    Letter       Letter
>    A4           A4
>    COM10        Comercial 10
>    ...          ...
>
> The other options should be changed similarly. The values really
> inserted into the GhostScript command line need not to be changed.

Why should they be similiar?  I thought that the purpose of foomatic was to
provide a mapping
between printer-driver-readable options and a human-readable dialog.
The omni's options were designed to be consistant and easy to understand
what value goes
with what key.  For instance, how does one know that Hagaki and Chou are
trays or forms?

Also, omni supports 190 forms.  Does ghostscript support that many?  Can
there be a 1 to 1 mapping
between ghostscript forms and omni forms so that we can include the second
parameter?

I think that this discussion is what should be covered in the Linux
Printing Summit.  It would be
a good goal to have every printer driver support common job properties.
The printer working
group over at www.pwg.org is working on a set of standard form names and
how they should
be expressed.  I am sure that everyone's input would be appreciated on how
it should look.

Mark

Take a look at the Linux Omni printer driver at
http://www.ibm.com/linux/ltc/projects/omni/