Thanks to tk for the response to my inlining query. "static inline" does indeed look like it might be the right answer. I'll dig into portability issues more and let dear diary know...
inkjets
I am obviously very heartened to hear that the Gimp-Print project is having good success with Even Toned Screening. As it happens, I spent some time today tuning the algorithms for a paying customer. The result is here, in case anyone is brave enough to dig through the code.
The biggest advantage of EBS is the new "tandem screening" mode, in which all planes are screened at the same time. If you're making light blue, this means more pixels covered by cyan or magenta dots, and less either white or both. The result is even better smoothness, and also a slightly expanded gamut.
I've looked at the Adaptive Hybrid screening in Gimp-Print, and find it to be quite excellent. In addition, there's been a lot of attention paid to doing the 6-color separation to minimize the patterning from darker inks in lighter regions - it's a delicate balance between those patterns and making the page sopping wet with light inks. The result is that Gimp-Print's 1440x720 mode is overall a bit smoother than my rinkj prototype in solids and gradients. I bet that a large part of the reason why they're seeing an improvement in going to ETS is the inherent advantage of error diffusion over blue noise masks for highly detailed areas such as line work.
Color is a lot trickier. I've found Gimp-Print to be about as well tuned as one can expect from hand-tuning and visual inspection. However, I think moving to "real" color management using a spectrophotometer will result in significant improvements. One area, in particular, that I think will improve dramatically is the consistency between the various modes and resolutions. If you look at Gimp-Print's 1440x720 and 720x720 modes on an Epson 870, they don't match very well. The latter also has some color management anomalies: the transition between light and dark inks seems to have notably less color saturation than it should.
My experiments with Argyll have been very positive, but more work is needed, especially to make the process easier for mortal users (my experimentation involves lots of arcane command lines and hand-editing of raw spectro data files). As is common for me, I feel like I have a pretty good idea how to do it, but it's hard to find the time. Hopefully, we will be able at some point to justify more inkjet work as part of the Ghostscript project, but until then it will go at the more usual free software pace :)
One solution to this problem would be to recruit an apprentice. I'm open to this idea, but haven't done much in the way of active recruiting. It would be a fairly good deal - the job of "color apprentice" would bring with it lots of goodies, including toys (printers and color measuring equipment), a damn good education in color science, help with getting academic recognition for the work (published papers and credit towards a degree), and a modest stipend. If you know of anybody, put us in touch :)
In any case, I'm very impressed with gimp-print's accomplishments, and am pleased that we're able to share code and other results. This is the true spirit of free software.
Python
I'm starting to really like Python. In fact, I've basically decided that all my "fun" programming is now going to be in Python, or C with Python wrappers.
Python, I think, is one of the few languages that lives up to the promise of huge productivity gains. One of the major wins is having lists, maps (hash tables), and strings right there under your fingertips. Another major win is a reasonably clean object framework. Yet another is a sane module and namespace organization.
At the same time, Python still has some serious practical problems. Among them is the fact that there is no one killer GUI toolkit. If you want stability and portability, there's Tkinter, which aside from those two virtues sucks pretty hard. wxPython seems to be picking up momentum, but it's still fairly immature, and it's also not clear that you get as good access to the underlying toolkit when there are three layers involved. PyGtk seems quite cool, but is not exactly portable. There are also the usual fit and polish problems of trying to run Gtk+ apps on other desktops, but those are by no means Python's fault.
Even so, there is no other language out there with a better GUI story than Python's, and some quite a bit worse (cough, Java, cough). With luck, at least one of the Python GUI toolkits will mature to the point where it becomes a truly compelling application platform.
Dare I mention it, but there's also the speed issue. By my quick benchmark, Python is about 200 times slower than optimized C for vanilla integer-and-array work. There's something more than a bit disconcerting about realizing that your 900MHz laptop has just become the equivalent of a 4.5MHz machine. Obviously, if you really care, you code the speed-critical bits in C, but I find this less than fully satisfying.
What I think has gotten me newly excited about Python is the realization that a lot of these problems simply reflect the relative immaturity of the platform, and will almost certainly be fixed over time. The core language is simple enough that it is realistic to expect that it will be implemented at least modestly well. If Python continues to mature as I expect it will, then it will become a powerhouse of free software.
If you're a Lispish type, you'll find this essay to be quite enlightening. In it, author Erann Gat describes how he "lost his faith" in Lisp, and is now happily hacking Python at Google.
One final thought: the primary reason that Tcl became popular is the fact that it was packaged with Tk. The fact that this was even possible at the time is a glowing testament to how far we've come since then.