Re: cups braille dependencies [Was: Please release the cups-filters 1.4.0-2 Debian package]

[Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org>]

Hello,

Not much reaction on this issue for now :)

Samuel Thibault, on Tue 15 Dec 2015 19:56:54 +0100, wrote:
> - device-dependent drivers, which are basically simple shell scripts or
> C files, which don't depend on anything beyond bash and libc
> 
> - device-independent filters, which are able to convert documents to
> braille.  This part can make more or less use of liblouis, imagemagick,
> antiword, etc. to be able to turn documents into nice braille printing.

I'm thinking: the device-independent filters don't strictly depend on
all of that: they at least do support raw text conversion so at least
printing text will work.  When printing non-pure-text, we could make
the filters emit advices to users through the error messages, e.g.
"liblouisutdml-bin package missing for braille translation".

That way, users will have embosser drivers ready for testing, and will
immediately get advices about how to get further in a very logical way.

It then becomes a tasksel matter about what translation tools should be
preinstalled on a default Debian desktop system to provide at least
basic document printing support.

Samuel