The UPDF day is Monday, Sept 11.
The conference will start at 8.30am and last to about 5.30pm.
We will agree on a lunch break.
I hope I'll be in the conference room in time, as I arrive shortly before
8am at the airport following the schedule.
The Boston conference (UPDF day around October 26) is considered a bigger
event for the UPDF group, as some things, which needed serious preparation,
grow together.
To aim at that major event we will have three sessions in Chicago:
1. Constraints
The discussion was started some time ago, but not finished.
I will send some material later today or tomorrow morning to enable
everybody to study it ahead.
We will have DTD files as well as XML files.
Statements to decide:
1.1. Conditions for constraints can be combined with AND and/or OR.
By nesting conditions recursively the number of levels and the complexity
possible is practically indefinite.
This allows a very flat architecture concerning the features of a printer
model, as all dependencies and interdependencies will be handled as
constraints.
1.2. Constraints will support the default action Filter.
Should it support messages? See proposals.
1.3. Constraints can also be used to handle conditional selections.
Select is considered an additional action.
1.4. Constraints are mainly known as an instrument to avoid conflicts in the
user interface of the driver's dialog.
The current proposal is supposed to be able to set conditions on almost any
combination of fields. Those constraints can also be used when composing
print files.
We will take samples from paper handling, as that is known as an area full
of constraints.
2. Overall architecture
The discussion about constraints will automatically lead to a more global
conversation about the overall architecture.
In case constraints work perfectly we may be able to flatten out the
architecture a bit.
2.1. Installable Options
We will see that constraints have serious impact on the handling of
installable options.
2.2. General extensibility
How easy should it be to add an installable option or new locale without
touching the original files?
This will be a discussion about a file structure.
2.3. Although a Universal Printer Data Description is considered platform
independent it should provide all information the operating system is
expecting.
What operating systems are exactly to be considered?
2.4. Linux
How much can the UPDF group help the Linux guys to implement an application
and a printing interface? Do we want to be involved? Do they want to be
involved?
3. Font handling
3.1. Open questions about the font handling concept so far.
3.2. We want to prepare at least one sample implementation of a device
resident font.
This sample font(s) should be demonstrated in Boston.
We want to get information about how easy it will be to create the
information automatically, how big such a standard font may be in XML and
how this information can be used best during install and runtime.
Regards
Norbert Schade
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 17:38:43 EDT