[Kde-print-devel] Fwd: Re: Solid and printers.

[Cristian Tibirna]

Hello Davide, hello kde-print fellows

I ommited to forward Davide's message and my answer to the list. All comments 
and completions are very welcome.

Thank you

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: Solid and printers.
Date: 5 June 2006 22:48
From: Cristian Tibirna <tibirna at kde.org>
To: Davide Bettio 'WindowsUninstall' <davbet at aliceposta.it>

On 2 June 2006 14:35, Davide Bettio 'WindowsUninstall' wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm a solid developer and I'm writing printer capability.
> Solid is a library that allow developers to get informations from hardware.
> Devices has got capabilities, a capability describes what a device can do.
> A device generally has a set of capabilities.
> Solid for now has three backend: hal, powersave and a fake backend. All
> informations are gathered from backends.
> What do you need about solid and printers?

Ciao Davide

Thank you for your interest in this sensible topic. Sorry for my late answer.
I wanted to think of your questions a bit and I also have very little time.
So, here is a first iteration of what I think KDEPrint would require from a
platform like Solid. BTW, if there are already some principial design
documents for Solid, please be so kind and point me to them.

So: KDEPrint would require:

a) a signal to which the kdeprint daemon can connect, and which would inform
about new printers connected to the system. The information transfered
through this signal would be of medium complexity:
	- printer model
	- means of connection

b) a standard mechanism (perhaps XML based) by which Solid could inform
KDEPrint of capabilities and features that the printer advertises itself
(e.g.: are there special paper trays installed? Is the color cartridge
installed? etc.)

c) a standard mechanism for communicating status:
	- toner level
	- paper missing
	- paper jam
	- etc (based on printer capabilities, communicated with mechanism at point
 b) - printer offline
	- job printing completed and finished

I'm not sure I captured all requirements a modern printing platform requires
but it's sure that the first iteration would be experimental. It would be
very useful to have Solid provide more info than what standard printing
systems  offer today. CUPS is already quite nice, but we can improve,
especially in the category c) above.

Thanks again

-------------------------------------------------------

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