Here's my hit list for 4.2. Does anyone else have anything they'd
like to add to this, or any comments? I'd like to load these into the
tracker somehow. If you disagree with the priority, please speak up
too!
I) Outright problems that we need to either fix or consciously waive
for 4.2 (potential stoppers).
1) Clean up the i18n for the print plugin (Roger?). I consider
this a stopper because the Gimp is one of our major users, and
we need our release to play with that.
2) Fix up/i18n the tooltips (I'm going to do that this week). It's
less clear what the impact of this one is.
3) Fix the HP glossy paper problem (Dave?). Is the right fix to
"alias" glossy paper to something else? This has been a thorn
in our side for a while.
4) Complete the I18n on the CUPS (Mike, Roger?).
5) Fix the Canon BJC-8200/S800. Andy has told me that he cannot do
this without a printer, and he either needs a printer or someone
else with a printer who's willing to dig in. Any volunteers out
there? This is another long-running thorn.
6) Test and tune some of the large format (Stylus Pro series) Epson
printers. This one's a bit borderline, since there probably
aren't a whole lot of people out there who really want this
right now, but this is potentially flagship functionality. The
reason I'm concerned about it prior to release is that there are
some untested code paths, and we may potentially have to change
the logic around or change some of the resolution options. I'd
really, REALLY hate to be talking about doing this after
release. In addition, the Stylus Pro 10000 is a variable drop
size printer; we may have to support two different printer
definitions, one for pigment ink and one for dye ink.
7) Determine that the Stylus Color, Stylus Color 1520, and other
very old printers do the right thing with the default resolution
in both color and black & white. Mike, can you test this? This
would represent a regression if it's broken.
II) Things that may well be stoppers, but I don't have as much
justification.
1) Figuring out how the color head alignment works, and on what
Epson Stylus printers it applies. Should this one be a stopper?
This will certainly affect more people than the Stylus Pro
printers, but it's not likely to be absolutely mandatory
functionality. Then again, for really critical, high quality
stuff, maybe it is. I'm talking with the Epson folks about it,
but a lot of people have been on vacation lately, and I'm not
sure where this is. Perhaps someone running Windows could
reverse engineer the remote mode command that prints the color
head alignment page.
2) Documentation. Consensus seems to be that we're doing much
better than we were last time, but it's still not great.
Potential stopper? What are we missing?
3) Human factor analysis (and cleanup, and???) on the Gimp plugin.
This is completely beyond my abilities. Mitch, Sven, can you
help us out here?
III) Things that we really should fix if we can, but that won't stop
the release.
1) Tune the Stylus Photo 2000P. Nothing at all has happened here
since 4.0. We haven't received any complaints about it, and I
don't think that this printer sells all that well. This one's
not a stopper by any stretch of the imagination since it's
simply a matter of tuning the inkset. If it turns out to be
more involved (which I think is unlikely) we can decide what to
do then.
2) Tune the 2880x720 Epson printers. It may be possible to get
slightly better print quality on those machines; if we can, that
would be mildly useful to a lot of people. If we can get an
improvement, it's going to be in the dark midtones, by using
smaller dots. The quality may be high enough already that we
don't need to worry.
3) Determine if there's some hidden way of using all the nozzles to
print in black and white at 720 and 1440x720 DPI on the Stylus
Color 480 and 580. This affects a lot of people; the workaround
is to print at a lower resolution (720x360), or to accept that
printing at 720 DPI, even in black and white, will be very slow
(as slow as printing in color on those already slow machines).
I'm working this with Epson.
IV) Things that would be really nice to have, but aren't essential.
1) Determine how to make the printer ID command work on the C20/C40
printers. I'm working this one with Epson also; there may
simply be no workaround.
2) Figure out how to embed non-printing information in the header
of a print job. I'm working this one with Epson. The idea is
that we can put the driver version, printer model, and such in
the file header, and then tell people to run parse-escp2 as part
of filing a bug report.
V) Things that are entirely off the table for now, but that we want
to do next time around.
1) Cartridge changing on the Stylus 480/580.
2) Support for duplex printing on Epson Stylus Photo 890 and some
friends.
--
Robert Krawitz <rlk@xxxxxxxxxxxx> http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/
Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Project lead for Gimp Print/stp -- http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net
"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton
