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Re: RFC: Refactoring our Printing Stack(s)



Le dimanche, 16 octobre 2011 20.22:58, Till Kamppeter a écrit :
> 
> What red Hat does here is that every printer driver package package
> provides a virtual package for each printer it supports where the name
> of each virtual package is composed of the MFG and MDL fields of the
> printer ID. So if a printer gets detected, something like
> 
> apt-get install driver-<make>-<model>

Hmm. Although that might sound interesting, I'm not sure we should abuse the 
"virtual packages" facility that way. The DEP-11 proposal sounds more suitable 
to our needs (and more Debian-alike), IMHO:

	http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00043.html

> would install a driver for the printer. The driver package could depend
> on additional needed packages. The exact name string for the virtual
> packages should follow the same scheme as for Red Hats RPM packages so
> that it is easier to create distribution-indpendent packages which are
> created as RPM and alienized to DEB.

My opinion about this is that either we have free-software drivers and they 
should be included in the distributions (with proper maintenance) or the 
drivers are non-free and, well, I don't care (but that's my POV).

Now, with the metadata proposal, it would certainly be possible for non-
distribution providers to add similar metadata to their packages too.

> With this in place we do not need to have all our printer drivers on the
> CD and it is still easy to install our driver packages.

Honestly, I don't think we should ease installation of out-of-archive 
packages: the quality of the FLOSS distributions resides in the inclusion of 
the needed free software as a coherent and trusted set.

> Even LSB packages of manufacturers could be marked that way to have
> alternative possibilities to find and select them. But we should continue to
> also offer the AppStore-like approach with a centralized database as
> OpenPrinting is doing it.

Agreed. The AppStore/AppStream project is probably going to bring metadata 
usage to the Debian ecosystem, and the printing stack should just use that 
when it comes to life; IMHO.

Cheers,

-- 
OdyX

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