[cups.development] [RFE] STR #2896: Applications need to be able to list and retreive installed ICC profiles

[Hal V. Egnel]

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[STR New]

This is specific to *nix platforms other than OS/X.

Applications need to be able to query the print server to obtain a list of
installed ICC profiles from the sever.  This is currently possible for
"standard" ICC profiles (IE. those that are in the PPD file for the
printer) but it is not possible for "custom" ICC profiles.  There needs to
be a mechanism for user land apps to query the print server to get a list
of available custom ICC profiles.

In addition user land apps need to be able to get copies of these profiles
(both standard and custom) for doing things like:

1. Soft proofing.

2. Presenting lists of profiles to users so that they can select a custom
profile.  

UI note - it is considered bad form for application user interfaces to
present these as a list of file names for profiles.  All commercial and
most open source CM aware applications present these as a list of the
descriptions that are extracted from the profiles.  Scribus is currently
considered the OSS application that has the nicest implementation of this
feature but many other OSS applications work this way (LProf, CinePaint,
Oryanos, Krita, kolor-manager...).  The reason for presenting the
description is that it generally contains information about the profile
that will help users select the correct profile.  So it is necessary for
user land applications to have access to the actual profiles to implement
this functionality.  In addition,  these applications will in many cases
present other information to users about the profiles to help them select
appropriate profiles or use information from the profiles to filter the
profile list.  For example,  depending on the printer settings some
applications filter the list of profiles presented to the user (IE. the
ColorMode is set to CMYK so the user can only select from a list of CMYK
profiles).  The application needs to have access to the profiles to be
able to do this.

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L2896
Version:  -feature