Chris Majewski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > For me, the "hard" way usually turns out to be the easy way in the > long run.
Not always. There _are_ problems with Linux (and other free Unices and even commercial Unices, to some degree) and it's important to recognize them and address them. You just can't demand that one distribution fix all of them immediately, and when judging distributions you should guage it against others, not always against Windows. For example, printing is truly a mess under Linux. If you have a postscript printer, have all apps generate postscript, and don't use any special fonts, you'll find it fairly easy to get going. However, * Any developer wanting an app to print has to learn Postscript, because there are no general APIs to use. (Note: This is being addressed, albeit in a fragmented way. Different libraries are being put together to make it easier to print. Yay!) * Any developer wanting to print with user-installed fonts or printer fonts needs to write their own way to access those fonts, because X doesn't give you outlines or all font metrics, and you can't get any info from Ghostscript. This means users have to install the same fonts in tons of places. (This is being addressed, but in a very fragmented way. It's going to get way worse before it gets better, since different groups are trying to solve it on their own, or are just shoving it away and hoping it goes away. Look at the miserable font/print handling in KWord, Star Office, WP (two COMPLETELY incompatible methods depending on version), and I won't even get into TeX. Additionally, defoma is trying to be a way to automatically install said font into all those different places, but it's still a mess.) * Retrieving printer information to optimize output (resolution, paper size, etc) is nigh impossible. Some apps (but not all) can now parse PPDs, but most of the printers installed don't currently have PPDs (because they aren't postscript). This isn't even getting into what happens when the print job hits the spooler, which is somewhat less of a problem but is so unstandardized that it vacuums SAN from anyone trying to support the different spoolers. Sorry... this is one of my hot buttons... I just want to point out that indeed, there are things left to address. -- Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - In a variety of flavors! You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems.
