We made some experiences with our implementation of the global media handling already and want to share them.
This is an excerpt from an earlier email today within our group.
We have implemented the global media handling spec into UPDF and talked about advantages and disadvantages.
This will be a separate email later today sent to the IPP group.
Here is the short version:
The spec is fully implented. Basically it works and we will stay with it.
Typical problems known within driver development are that keywords are saved in application files as well as in driver files. One unit system for media sizes would make it way easier for drivers to convert between two different workstations. A driver could solve that by providing search routines, but this is extra work and slows down performance.
mm/10 is causing rounding errors in a number of cases. mm/1000 as the only global unit would solve that. Like in PostScript a driver could work with a rounding range, but this is extra work and we'd like more precision.
There are more media type keywords used nowadays than the media type list provides so far. IBM's list has a number of keywords commonly used within drivers nowadays.
It is not apparent, why a small number of media colors are predefined with a name instead of using triples like 255-255-0 to define yellow. For us it would be sufficient to define the syntax for these triples. If there are popular triples, ok. Let's predefine them and describe them with a name like in media type:
media type keyword: stationery
media type description: Separately cut sheets of an opaque material
proposed media color keyword: 255-255-0
media color description: The specified media should be yellow
A driver may be very interested in the RGB values.
We need more global lists of media keywords in the UPDF descriptions like for media sources, destinations, etc. We are providing that with our own standard so far.
The conclusion is that we need the lists of keywords, although there are some improvements possible and required.
Regards
Norbert Schade
Principle Software Engineer
Host Software Group
Oak Technology, Inc.
10 Presidential Way
Woburn, MA 01801
USA
Phone: 1-781-638-7614
Fax: 1-781-638-7555
email: norbertschade@oaktech.com
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