[cups.general] Why not "recommend" PPDs in the NickName?

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Jan 26 08:30 Michael Sweet wrote (shortened):

> Johannes Meixner wrote:
> > ...
> > Personally I prefer probabilities instead of percentage values
> > (where 1 means "perfect" and 0 means "useless") and perhaps
> > optionally additional weights with default weight = 1.
> 
> Multiply by 100 to get percentages, which can be represented as
> integers...

No.
A probability is in the range [0,1].
In contrast 120% is an allowed percentage value.


But meanwhile I think probabilities are wrong because
of their limited range.
A driver which is considered right now to produce perfect
printout quality would have the probability 1 regarding quality
but how should we do the ranking for a new driver which produces
even better quality (it cannot have a probability of 1.2).

Therefore I think we must alllow unlimited values.

Then also percentages become misleading because a driver
which is considered right now to produce perfect printout
quality would have 100% regarding quality but when we set
the ranking for a new driver which produces even better
quality to 120%, an unexperienced user may overlook the
new driver and think he already has the best possible
quality when using the old 100% driver.

Therefore I think we should use unlimited integer values
(with optional weights) and calculate the overall ranking value
for a PPD by the weighted arithmetic mean.

Additionally I think we should allow negative integer values
to rate also annoying stuff like
  *DriverRestriction/Works only on 32-bit hardware: "-3"
  *DriverStability/Craches often for unknown reason: "-5"

For example this driver may produce the really best quality
at high speed (therefore topmost ranking values for quality
and speed) but at the moment it is in alpha state and therefore
some other ranking values should be there to get a correct
overall ranking value for a PPD which uses this driver.
When it is in a stable state which works also on 64-bit hardware,
the above entries can be removed from the PPD.


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5      Mail: jsmeix at suse.de
90409 Nuernberg, Germany                    WWW: http://www.suse.de/