[cairo] Subtractive API, part 0

[Jon Cruz]

On Feb 1, 2010, at 7:38 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:

> The "experience" workflow is a relic of a by-gone era. Modern printers understand they need to adhere to established print standards so that people can use standard output profiles for standard printing conditions, because it enables modern manufacturing principles. The custom workflow that requires "experience" is the antithesis of a modern manufacturing process because every job is treated as custom. It's expensive. It's slow. And while such workflows exist, it is not a growth industry, just the opposite.

Just to highlight a few aspects of this point...

A friend who lives in China just had two large conference (Libre Graphic Meeting) posters printed some small local place. He gave them a digital file and some swatches to be sure to match, and got the two oversized posters for about $0.20 each. The main point being that since that shop has their process down, they can crank out decent quality results with a fast turn around and low cost. Now, the cost of local materials, etc. will affect the actual price (we can't all live in productive neighborhoods of China) but I think this illustrates how print houses need to move to modern methods or just be passed by.

And... for open source, we need to facilitate the same move to modern, productive practices or be relegated to "amateur" status for the long term.