[hfdb] Re: Grand Unified Hardware Database

[Till Kamppeter]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>     We put simply driver lists into the entries, as shown above. In the 
>     Foomatic database the <driver> entry is the recommended driver, 
>
> There can't be one "recommended" driver once we support multiple
> systems.  Something else has to be done.

The recommended driver on linuxprinting.org is the one which makes the 
printer working best, it usually gives the highest output quality. As 
only free drivers are considered and as printer drivers are simply 
filters to convert PostScript or a standard bitmap image format to the 
printer's native language (no kernel drivers or so) they should work the 
same way on all systems and so the recommended one stays the same on 
GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, ... But a driver recommendation can also 
depend on other things (best output quality, fastest, most user-settable 
options, ...), so the comment text should contain additional info if 
there are also other recommended drivers and why they are recommended. 
Having one especially recommended driver in a database field makes 
automated setup processes possible, so that even users who do not know 
what drivers are, get there printers or other hardware working.

   Till