Johannes Meixner <jsm...@suse.de> writes: > On Feb 22 17:23 Gerhard Jaeger wrote (shortened): >> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 16:21, Johannes Meixner wrote: >> > Perhaps it is possible to "misuse" the PPD file syntax for scanner >> > setup as well. >> >> You are right, but I don't like the idea to "misuse" something, >> especially it has a spec consiting of 186 pages ;) > > Don't get confused by the length of the PPD spec. > The spec of the plain PPD syntax is small. > Most in Adobe's PPD spec is description about very printer > specific stuff (which keywords should be used and so on ...). > >> But we should really create some unique database, somehow >> automagically, where every backend puts it's information >> and options to in a well defined way. > > I didn't dare to ask for this.
What you are suggesting here sounds quite a bit to the way foomatic handles printers. - an XML database - a few utilities to crank out PPD files - one utility to glue the PPDs, the spooler and the printer drivers together I guess, we could do without the PPD files for scanners because there is no established standard yet. Anyway, with all the info in an XML database, converting to *.desc or *.conf or ... is just a matter of writing the right XSL style sheet. See http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic.html for details. > Obviously it is best not to maintain any kind of text files > but to run the backend in a special mode and the backend spits out > what it knows in a well defined format. It be nice if the backend could spit out a baseline because quite a few backends seem to at least partially support new models without any modification. As a matter of fact, I have been playing with the thought to externalise a lot of data that is now hard-coded in the epkowa backend into data files. This would make it possible to add support for at least some scanners without a recompile of the backend. # If the original data is in XML format, it would also ease keeping my # (internal) specs in sync with reality ;-) Just my two yen, -- Olaf Meeuwissen EPSON KOWA Corporation, PF1 FSF Associate Member #1962 sign up at http://member.fsf.org/ GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 Penguin's lib! -- I hack, therefore I am -- LPIC-2