Re: [hfdb] Sorry - fixed now Re: [Fwd: Summary of the LSM Free Software Printing Summit]

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, 2004-07-24 at 01:16, Joe Shaw wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, 2004-07-23 at 00:17 +0200, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > I'm not sure how much hal needs to be involved here - remember, one of
> > the primary goals of hal is merge (arbitrary) data with bus/class
> > specific data, not replace existing software.
> > 
> >
> > So the thinking is that desktop apps just ask hal for printers on the
> > system and then they get both the information we've probed for (usb,
> > ieee1284 and device node) as well as the stuff we've merged (the name of
> > the ppd file).
> > 
> > Now, I don't know a lot about printing, Joe Shaw might be better to
> > comment on this, but am I on the right track? Or is this already solved
> > in existing or planned software?
> 
> David, I think this is the right approach.
> 
> Zenaan, to what extent does this plan overlap, integrate, and work in
> conjunction with Foomatic?  Foomatic already has a pretty good printer
> database with good info, and it has the mechanism for mapping for

I am not actually a printer guy. I am involved in the HFDB hardware
database project though...

> autodetection of printers (although something like 1% of the printer
> descriptions actually have that info, sigh.).

... and collecting that sort of information is what we are in the
business of doing (and working with the existing projects). Early days
yet, but we're on the way...

> When I looked at the printing problem a few months ago, I really
> approached it from the foomatic angle, as that's what all the major
> distributions use for their printer descriptions.  I think it'd help to
> get a little more insight into how it fits into the puzzle, if at all.

Don't know enough on this to comment. Naively, I would assume it would
be good to unify the printer drivers ("PPD files" or whatever) if there
are separate collections of such, so that there is a single, canonical
database. And beyond even that, in the HFDB project we are working to a
unified db of hardware device descriptions across all hardware device
categories. At the minimum, a centralized collection point, but I think
ideally actually storing all the data, and generating multiple output
formats as needed for various projects.

cheers
zen