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  • From: Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] Cups and Ghostscript . . .
  • Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 10:41:58 +0200

On Sat, Sep 24, 2005 at 10:42:23PM -0700, Jason Flatt wrote:
> I've had this outstanding bug [0] on my plate for quite a while. Over the
> course of the last couple of months, I've been reading about and
> experimenting with cups, espgs, ghostscript and a few other printer section
> programs trying to figure out what exactly is going on. I've been doing
> this
> for a greater understanding of those programs and the printing process, and
> because I'd really like to get rid of that awkward circular casting setup
> the
> way it is now.
>
> What I've determined are these things:
> * cups does not depend on any ghostscript program to compile.
> * cups does depend on espgs to print to postscript printers (AFAIKT,
> mostly
> laser printers -- I haven't quite pinned this down, but I will)
> * cups will not print with any ghostscript program other than espgs.
> * cups does not depend on any ghostscript program to print to a
> non-postscript printer (for example, an inkjet printer using foomatic
> drivers).
> * espgs optionally depends on cups.
> * espgs does not need cups to work correctly as a ghostscript program.
> * espgs needs to be compiled with cups support in order for cups and it to
> work correctly with each other.
> * none of the other ghostscript programs know or care about cups (I
> actually
> suspect the programs don't care at all). :^)
>
> (I've also determined a few things about gimp-print and will be changing
> some
> dependencies there, as well.)
>
> Here's what I've decided to do:
> * make the cups spell not depend on any ghostscript spell.
> * make the espgs spell not depend on cups at all and give $OPTS the
> --without-cups option w/o asking for feed back.
> * create a new spell based on cups (called cups-espgs) that will compile
> and
> install cups and then compile and install espgs with the --with-cups option
> specified (no asking).

Why the espgs default and the seperate cups-espgs spell? Just removing
the ghostscript dependency from cups and making espgs optionally depend
on cups looks to me like it would solve all issues already, maybe with
a note in the cups spell that you need espgs to print to postscript
(pcl?) printers.

>
> That will give a few things:
> * people who need the cups/espgs combo can have it with only a single
> spell
> cast.
> * people who use cups w/non-postscript printers can have it w/o needing
> espgs
> (or can choose one of the other ghostscript programs for other things).
> * people who want espgs but don't print or use cups to print can do so w/o
> the extra overhead.
>
> I suspect that last item represents, by far, the least number of users.
> :^)
> This is what I am going to be doing over the course of the next week or
> two.
> I just wanted to kind of give folks a heads up, so when the changes come
> across they are aware of what is going on.
>
> [0] http://bugs.sourcemage.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7548
>
> --
> Jason Flatt
> Source Mage GNU/Linux: Linux so advanced, it may as well be magic.
> http://www.sourcemage.org/
> jflatt AT sourcemage.org

--
Arwed v. Merkatz Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
http://www.sourcemage.org




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