cups ppd files

Timothy Murphy tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
Sat Aug 26 13:13:02 UTC 2006


James Wilkinson wrote:

>> I would suggest that the author or authors work out exactly how the
>> program [system-config-printer] is meant to work, and document that,
>> and preferably re-write the whole thing in python or perl,
>> so that one can see exactly what it is trying to do.
> 
> I think you *greatly* exaggerate the ability of Python to force
> programmers to produce readable code. And as for Perl -- the comparison
> between (some) Perl and line noise is very widely acknowledged.
> 
> In any case,
> [james at kendrick ~]$ file /usr/sbin/system-config-printer
> /usr/sbin/system-config-printer: symbolic link to `printconf'
> [james at kendrick ~]$ file /usr/sbin/printconf
> /usr/sbin/printconf: python script text executable
> 
> In other words, it already is Python.

I see I have _two_ versions of system-config-printer
on my laptop, in /usr/bin (which takes priority) and /usr/sbin :
-----------------------------------
[tim at elizabeth ~]$ ls -ls `which system-config-printer`
0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Aug 23 13:10 /usr/bin/system-config-printer ->
consolehelper
[tim at elizabeth ~]$ ls -ls /usr/sbin/system-config-printer
0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Aug 23 13:10 /usr/sbin/system-config-printer ->
printconf
-----------------------------------
Both versions are supplied by the same (recent) system-config-printer rpm.

Incidentally, I wasn't suggesting that programs written in Python or Perl
are necessarily more readable than programs in C -
I actually believe the opposite -
but if a program is written in Python or Perl
it is easier to trace what is happening,
eg by inserting temporary print commands.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland




More information about the fedora-list mailing list