PS/PDF API Change Proposal: (Re: [cairo] Semantics of transparent objects)

[Carl Worth]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 20:01:04 -0500, Michael Sweet wrote:
> Carl Worth wrote:
> > ...
> > Obviously, there _are_ a lot of printing-specific options, settings,
> > and metadata that users will need to provide. And the point has been
> > made above that these need to be available on a per-page basis.
> > 
> > I'm wondering if we can't just use cairo_t for these, and specify that
> > the time to set them is before any drawing operation on any given
> > page. That is, just after cairo_create or cairo_show_page, and before
> > any of cairo_stroke, cairo_fill, cairo_paint, cairo_mask,
> > cairo_show_text/glyphs on that page.
> 
> That would work.  IMHO, the only "required" per-page attributes are
> the media attributes: media color (the color of the paper, not whether
> the output is in color), page size, media source, media type, and
> media weight.

What's not clear to me yet is what cairo is supposed to do with these
options. From the recent discussion on the desktop_printing list[*]
it's been made quite clear that applications should emit
printer-independent PostScript and that that should be passed along
with printer-specific options to CUPS.

So, cairo fits in on the PostScript-generation side of things. And if
it should then always be generating printer-independent PostScript
then I don't see why it should see any printer-specific settings, (or
even what it could do with them if it shouldn't put them into the
PostScript output).

Or are all the attributes you describe above printer-independent? I
don't know for sure what you mean by "media source" for example. Is
that the printer's paper tray? If so, that's clearly printer-specific.

-Carl (still quite a newbie to the whole printing thing)

[*] Information on the list is here:

	https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_printing

I wanted to link to the thread in the archives, but I was surprised to
just discover that they are restricted to subscribers only. I assume
that was an oversight, and I've asked for them to be made available.
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