michael chang wrote: >>I read often "Manual Duplex" in consumer printer advertizing. And that >>means usually that the software coming with the printer has such a >>manual duplex wizard. If we provide it from the OS or from the desktop, >>we can say "Duplex on every printer, either manual or automatic". > > > Well, I wouldn't go as far as "every printer" - some printers have no > auto-duplex and they have closed paper feed trays. Re feeding a sheet > back in a machine that requires a complex tray-opening system would be > annoying. Although yes, technically, it would still be a manual > duplex on that printer. >
Some printers are really not suitable, like the small dye-sublimation photo printers. > *If* (and this is the big selling point) it can be made working, then > I see nothing wrong with it as something extra. > I think we only need to find enough manpower. > > Of course, this goes against the 'it just works' philosophy - it would > work if we could get it integrated into the printer's initial setup, > preferably when installing the OS or something, if such a thing is > necessary. > > Or you can quasi-copy windows and pop up a window/balloon/message > saying "Printer XYZ has been found and automatically detected. Basic > functionality is now available in most applications. If you wish to > use advanced features such as manual double-sided printing, please > click on this balloon to start the 'Printer Setup Wizard'.". [It's > probably more flexible to do that then to try and catalogue all the > duplexing behaviours of every single printer on the market now and in > the 5-10 years to come that the exact same GNOME will be used on.] > Do not require another database, but calibrating the wizard when setting up the queue would be even greater, once the admin has set it up, it just works for every user. > Other issue is copyright - we'd have to make sure we weren't > infringing on anything with this (I would imagine not, but...) -- Can it be that the principle of a manual duplex wizard is patented? > the > only reason I got this idea is because I remember some Windows > applications didn't bother using whatever duplexing (if any) was > provided by Windows (you could use it if you wanted, but it wasn't > necessary) and they had their own internal manual duplexing system and > wizard. But that was on a per-application level, and I had a couple > of those, so setting them all up the same way was kinda repetitive. > Once having a system-wide wizard under Linux, application programmers do not need to bother any more. > > The idea is interesting. Now the hard part: implementation. But I > don't have enough coding experience to do it myself. :( My > understanding is GNOME is already ridden with ideas, at least to keep > every developer busy for a few years. I'll have to remember to mark > this one, just so I can check on it in a few years. > Find some big funding to employ a lot of programmers. Till
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