[Idea] “Rich” data processing for the core driver, and extensibility

[NaitLee]

The primary printing format for the driver is currently PBM image.

True it’s very simple at first glance — though it become inflexible when requirement have grown.

I’m thinking about to change this, to some annotation-based rendering engine for rich content, with streaming possible.

For a brief view of concept, what would we input to stdin for that:

Tap to expand

text unifont-16 2 center -
Hello world!
-
text magick Noto-Serif 32 left -
Rich
text magick Noto-Sans 32 right -
text!
-
-
image 384 -
UUUU...
-
image 256 base64 center -
AaBb1234...
-
image pbm left -
P4
128 64
UUUU...
-
retract --
text fantasque-24 right -
Look at the image
on the left!
Beautiful!
-

Notes for these:

• PF2 font for printing by default, number argument for scaling
• Number argument for font size for Magick
• Images can be in various width, aligned to sides or middle
• Retract without number argument to retract as much as the last item
• Us are in place of binary data (ASCII U is 0b01010101 😜)
• … these are still imaginary 😛

And this should be easily extensible, i.e. writing plugins for it would be very simple, just by writing new functions and “registering” properties.

I wish this could happen in the future… 😇