[Foomatic] Re: 1350W Database entry.

Grant Taylor gtaylor+foodev_ggjfi071304 at picante.com
Tue Jul 13 07:51:51 PDT 2004


jmartin33 at kc.rr.com (Jeff Martin) writes:

> Is there a document that describes all the tags and what I should or
> should not include?

The README in the foomatic-db package has a lengthy discussion of each
tag.

As a practical matter if you hand us something even vaguely half there
we'll fix it.

You appear to have made a new file for the 1350W.  I had already put
it in as the "Minolta-PagePro_1350W".  Perhaps you started from the
head cvs branch before yesterday afternoon's merge.  I just knew this
branching scheme would be confusing :(

> I just copied another entry and edited it.

> How do I put in more than one resolution?

You may be able to provide a series of <dpi> tags, but that would be
only an artifact of the implementation.  The intent is just to list
the highest hardware (ie, not marketing) resolution of the device.

> Which tags are actually used to make the PPD?

Parts of:

printer/make
printer/model
printer/lang/
printer/autodetect/
opt/[everything!]
driver/name
driver/execution
driver/printers

> Where do I put the name of the driver?

The driver is bascially described in the drivers/min12xxw.xml file.
This needs a <prototype> added (probably something like "gs ... |
minxx12w %A").  The driver file already includes the tags to show that
it runs the 1350, 1250, etc.

Then each runtime option for the program needs an opt/*.xml file.
There is a whole section on these in the README, as they are somewhat
complicated.  Ultimately the entire man page becomes machine-readable
data, including all interactions between different options, printer
types, etc.

The simplest approach will be to make a series of
opt/min12xxw-OptName.xml files each describing an option with a single
<constraint> to apply it to the driver.  The new "PrinterType" option
someone mentioned adding can have additional constraints on the
possible option values such that the default value of the option will
be the proper printer type in each different printer PPD.

As I mentioned, the foo2zjs driver includes a good standalone example
of all of this, for a driver that runs in a similar way to yours.
It's opt files might be the best starting point.

-- 
Grant Taylor
Embedded Linux Consultant
http://www.picante.com/



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