Hardware Posting...

[coldReactive]

I was just wondering, should we post XPS Documents of our full hardware list when getting hardware support? Because I think that's a wise thing to do. See this image for how to make an XPS File. After clicking print, a save as... dialog will come up asking you to save an XPS File. You WILL NOT see the printer icon UNTIL you select your computer (IE: izek-laptop)

Yeah, I know my printer isn't installed, but I don't need to use it yet.

If you can't view XPS Documents, then you need to get an XPS Viewer.

[GreatLord]

XPS can only be read with office 2007 or with vista
it is ms lates format, and it is close. almost no opensource program can read it yet. It will take time revers how this new close format works. for thuse project that want it it

[geertvdijk]

Microsoft markets it as being open:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/default.mspx
And according to wikipedia, it's actually quite open:

In order to encourage wide use of the format, Microsoft has released XPS under a royalty-free patent license, allowing users to create implementations of the specification that read, write and render XPS files as long as you include a notice within the source that technologies implemented may be encumbered by patents held by Microsoft. Microsoft also requires that organizations "engaged in the business of developing (i) scanners that output XPS Documents; (ii) printers that consume XPS Documents to produce hard-copy output; or (iii) print driver or raster image software products or components thereof that convert XPS Documents for the purpose of producing hard-copy output, you covenant that you and your affiliates will not sue Microsoft or any of its licensees under the XML Paper Specification or customers for infringement of any XML Paper Specification Derived Patents (as defined below) on account of any manufacture, use, sale, offer for sale, importation or other disposition or promotion of any XML Paper Specification implementations." The specification itself is released under a royalty-free copyright license, allowing its free distribution.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Paper_Specification)
Further more, Okular (the KDE document viewer) seems to read XPS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okular

EDIT: the full community promise on XPS is located here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpsco ... omise.mspx

[counting_pine]

Is it necessary to use XPS? MS ships with a "Generic / Text Only" printer driver. Would that do?

[cppm]

There's plenty 'o' PDF printers for windows.

Google CutePDF...

[coldReactive]

XPS can only be read with office 2007 or with vista
it is ms lates format, and it is close. almost no opensource program can read it yet. It will take time revers how this new close format works. for thuse project that want it it

XPS Printing COMES with XP SP2, but not the viewer. The Viewer AND the printing come with Vista.

@cppm for "Cute"PDF. That's like saying we should use "Cute"FTP rather than Filezilla or even FireFTP (FireFTP is good, because you don't need to have a different registry point for it.)

Besides, we can always use OpenOffice's Draw to "lay out" a sheet of hardware specifications by reading the info from the hardware profiler. Draw is like QuarkXpress. -_-

[Techno Mage]

The XPS printer comes with IE7, and the stand alone viewer requires Dot Net 3

[cppm]

@Iyeru

That's like saying we should use "Cute"FTP rather than Filezilla or even FireFTP

The PDF's created by proprietry software are still PDF's. Likewise for FTP clients. I don't appreciate getting slapped for suggesting an obvious solution when noone else, including you, was even bothering

Why use XPS when you can use PDF?

Besides, we can always use OpenOffice's Draw to "lay out" a sheet of hardware specifications by reading the info from the hardware profiler. Draw is like QuarkXpress. -_-

Draw=Visio
QuarkXpress=Scribus

I'm going to guess you haven't used QuarkXpress in depth if you think that it's like Draw. Neither, granted, have I, but even with a few hours of experience I can see it's a different beast.

And more to the point, if it's so simple to read in the info from the hardware profiler, would you care to explain how that is done... I know how it's done in linux:

Code: Select all

 lspci > lspci.list

and the relevent commands for anything else etc etc...

PS: I can make faces too...

[Haos]

On Win32 you can use CrystalCPUID for pci bus scanning.