[Kde-print-devel] Report of Linux Printing Summit. Part 1:observations

[Cristian Tibirna]

On 19 April 2006 03:41, Goffioul Michael wrote:
> > * things in which KDEPrint development is concerned start
> > moving faster after the Summit. There is discussion about:
> > - a common standard for printing dialogs, so that these
> > become uniformized all over Linux applications (KDE, GTK,
> > mozilla, OOo etc.)
> > - a technology for framework agnostic printer driver
> > plugins/extensions for the printing dialog
>
> Is this about the possibility for the driver to customize the UI
> of the printing/driver dialog, in the way it is done under Windows?

I don't know about the similarity to windows, but yes.

> If yes, then it's a big change. Last time (3 years ago) I proposed
> something similar, I just got a big "No" from the whole community.

I can't give you a fair comparison as I only know the athmosphere of this 
year, but people in the know seemed to say this time around things vent 
really smoothly and politics took a way back seat, making collaboration and 
pragmatism so much easier.

It is to be said that only a very small number of full hobbyists/idealists was 
there (I dare say I was one and perhaps Waldo was another -- all the others 
were more pragmatically related to the work in hand, thus less inclined for 
religiosity and bikeshedding).

To be fair, I'm not a staunch defender of the idea of having printer 
manufacturers take over the printing dialog UI. The situation in windows is 
horrid. But I (perhaps too idealistically) hope that we will find the right 
solution so that usability and aesthetics won't be sacrificed to NIH syndrom, 
twisted commercialism or wrong-handed pride alas arrogance.

> I'm glad to see things changing...

All the time I was there I had in mind that you, Michael, would have been much 
better fit to the gathering and to the purpose. I hope I made honor to your 
work with what I've done there. I just press myself to get more speed in 
development too. People loose patience and start to do things in the haste 
and it's not good.

Have a good day.


-- 
Cristian Tibirna
KDE developer .. tibirna at kde.org .. http://www.kde.org