Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

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