UPD Mail Archive: UPD> Items 5 and 11

UPD> Items 5 and 11

From: Jim Sommer (jsommer@bellatlantic.net)
Date: Thu Sep 20 2001 - 09:28:17 EDT

  • Next message: Norbert Schade: "UPD> Decision: items 11, 12"

    I want to throw in my 2 cents on these.

    Item 5 - Parameter Converter and UI Strings

    It would make my life easier if we didn't use the parameter converter for
    UI strings but I can see the usefulness of this function. If we do allow
    it, I think the place for it is in the Name_ID and not the string itself.
    My main reason it that this keeps our locale files clean for easy
    translation which was the whole point of moving the UI strings to separate
    files in the first place

    Item 11 - IDs

    Though I appreciate the concept behind making the classifying attributes
    unique, I think it creates two problems.

    1) The UPDF becomes less readable. For instance, media sizes and margins
    would be separate items and you'd have to go to a third place to find how
    they are related.

    2) Composite Features or Interdependencies would be required to do just a
    simple printer description. These are powerful and very useful features
    and, I imagine, every printer description will use at least one of them.
    However, in the course of creating a printer description or driver, it will
    be much easier to do the device description first and verify it. After that
    is complete, the user interface (composite features and interdependencies)
    can be considered. By separating margins from media sizes, they must be
    connected by either a composite feature or interdependencies. So, just to
    get something to print correctly, these functions would have to be
    implemented. Also, since either function could be used, there would be no
    common method of relating media size with margins.

    I think we'd create more problems than we'd fix by eliminating the unique IDs.

    Jim
    mailto:sommer@granitesystems.com
    978-486-3068



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