kde3 kde4 coinstallability take two

[Thiago Macieira]

Em Monday 22 October 2007 14:29:25 Kurt Pfeifle escreveu:
> > In any case, CUPS isn't the only backend we support.
>
> It is a pretty save guess that more than 90% of *nix-based users have
> CUPS.

No doubt about that. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that CUPS is the only 
printing system we should support on Unix. This is my *personal* opinion.

The problem is that we're no longer Unix-only. Here's where problems arise.

> This in turn means we should be very careful with what we change for
> them, especially if we remove features.

I understand.

> And for Win32/64 of course, never existed at all up to now.

Now it does. And it doesn't accept PostScript.

> > Therefore, we cannot rely
> > on CUPS features, like accepting those formats.
>
> Where there is CUPS underneath, *of course* you should rely on and offer
> to use those features! What else?!

Agreed, but it has to be done only where it makes sense.

If we provide a "print a PNG" feature, we have to provide it everywhere (or 
come up with a really good and convincing reason why it doesn't work in 
certain circumstances). 

Which in turn means we must not depend on a CUPS feature only: it has to 
be "emulated" in our printing system if the feature isn't available in the 
backend.

Printing image formats is rather easy, because we have image loaders. We don't 
have a PostScript loader though: so implementing a light-weight equivalent 
of "kprinter *.ps" is close to impossible. Enter, therefore, the heavy-weight 
all-purpose document viewer.

I have no problems with providing "kprinter" in KDE Workspace: we can easily 
say we support CUPS only in the KDE Workspace (see above). And this is also 
not a co-installability issue, because KDE Workspace 4 cannot be installed at 
the same time as KDE 3's.

> > That is not a KDE3-vs-KDE4 co-installability issue.
>
> Right, But it is something to keep in mind whenever "printing" is dis-
> cussed.

No. You're hijacking every single thread that has "print" mentioned to 
reiterate again and again your arguments. We have understood them.

Now let's stick to the topic at hand: installing KDE 3 and 4 at the same time.

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
    PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
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