QTR-Quadtone RIP

Roy, I've been skiing some work with keyboard maestro on the Mac to make installing new profiles more automated. I'm going to publish the workflow next week, but the basic idea is you select the qidf file you want to install press a key command and it launches drop-quad-profile, finds the most recently created/updates file in the library/printer/QTR/QuadTone directory and the. Open the new quad file in curve view. It is similar to what happens when you press show curve in the Windows QTRgui.

My question is, aren't the install/curve creation programs just Perl scripts? And if so, can they be launched from the command line similar to how they are on a Mac. The only reason why I can't see that being the case is that Windows isn't a UNIX based system? I'm not too up on the OS stuff so I'm just guessing here. But if new curves can be created directly from text files and not go through the gui then wouldn't that solve the curve creation with Windows 10 problems?

Richard Boutwell

Was typing quickly on the phone and forgot to add that the whole point of this would be to use keyboard maestro to open a command line interface, put in the qidf and have the QTR curve creation program do its thing.

RB

Dear Richard.

All of this can be done much more eloquently with shell scripts (bash or something more complex like perl/python what-have-you) directly and then packaged into essentially a droplet (something Maestro is doing in the background already no-doubt).

I’m also unsure of what purpose this would serve other than to complicate matters more for an end-user . . .

best,
Walker

> On Jun 3, 2016, at 12:53 PM, Roy Harrington roy@harrington.com [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you want to do where -- and what the benefit 
> is supposed to be.  But you are right that there's just a bunch of scripts -- many perl --
> that do it all.  Things vary a little between Mac & PC but much the same idea.
> I don't know Maestro but looking at it -- it seems everyone would need to buy it.
> I only saw Mac stuff not PC ??  Are you trying to do both??
> 
> Roy
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 8:40 AM, richard@... <mailto:richard@...> [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com <mailto:QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com>> wrote:
> Was typing quickly on the phone and forgot to add that the whole point of this would be to use keyboard maestro to open a command line interface, put in the qidf and have the QTR curve creation program do its thing.
> 
> RB
> 
> ------------------------------------
> Posted by: richard@richardboutwell.com <mailto:richard@...>
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> 
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> 
> Yahoo Groups Links
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Roy Harrington
> roy@... <mailto:roy@...>
> www.harrington.com <http://www.harrington.com/>
> 
>

I make a lot of profiles for testing different parameters and use the drop-quad for everything so I can keep track of the latest modified/created quads. If you use the install command in the profiles folder, it will
Result in all the quads having the same modified/created date. 
 
I know you all know the process of using drop quad, but this just illustrates how many steps I go through for every profile I make. To use drop quad you need to first launch it, then navigate to the qidf drag it to the drop-quad in the dock (or right click and choose "open with...". That will create/update the curve and then I make sure it installed ok in the temp text file, then close that and navigate to the quad folder and find the one that was just created and open it in curve view. All those actions take a few seconds each, and gets tiresome,  especially if it's done several times for each iteration of the profile. I've cut all those steps out and just have one keyboard short cut that does each of those things within fraction of a second. I do the same thing for installing remapped quads without needing to run the install command in the profiles folder. I just have a dummy qidf that I select and hit the keyboard shortcut and it makes the newest quad available to print with. 

I am putting something similar together for create icc that will automatically put it into the color sync/profiles folder. The same with linearize-data that will select the linearize line and copy it to the clipboard. The same with linearize-quad—just select the measurement file and quad and it will relinearize, and if successful will ask where to put the new curve, will open it in curve view, and then install it similar to what I am doing with drop quad. 

I do have it calling a few different shell scripts based on system events, and I am sure all this stuff could all be done with apple/shell/Perl scripts, Automator, and custom
Key bindings, but keyboard maestro makes all that much more approachable for non programmers (like me). It also allows people to share actions and they don't need to come up with new ones themselves. Plus there are a lot of other cool things that it can do system wide. I still might get as far as making a profiling application but it would still only create a qidf that would need to be run through the curve creation program... Anyway, these are just some ideas I've toyed with to cut down on the number of steps and all the clicking and dragging needed. I could dig around and see if it could be done more eloquently, but as it is now, pressing one key combo and having stuff happen instantly is already pretty neat.

As far as Windows QTRqui and win10 goes it would be a lot nicer to do everything from a text file and an install script rather than dealing with the broken curve creation module.  I didn't realize that keyboard maestro was Mac only,but I'm sure there has to be something similar for Windows.