I don't know if this interests you guys, but Linux has being moving to a color managed print workflow with untagged assumed to be sRGB, as on the Mac, thereby creating a seamless printing workflows for naive Desktop Linux users who want to print their Jpeg family snapshots and mobile phone photos.
However, as the color specialist for Gutenprint, I've lobbied to make it a design goal of color management for CUPS/Gutenprint on Linux that we be able to print files with "no color management". I must say that what motivated me was my experience on the Mac the few past years, and conversations re. inkjet printing frustration which were held on the sidelines at ICC meetings I attended. After considerable debate, Till decided that a special *documented* option flag that passes through data without conversion would be implemented.
As a print option, this flag will override even the implicit assumption of sRGB now applied to print output from legacy apps. Also, entire print queues will also be able to run with this flag set, thereby allowing the use of a Linux/CUPS/Gutenprint configuration as an externally color managed print server for legacy hardware.
With some luck, and if you lobby the Mac CUPS Gods hard enough (eg. feature requests), the same options *may* be propagated back into the version of CUPS on the Mac. For political correctness, let me emphasize that these options are designed to be used exclusively by experts who deliberately wish to bypass the consumer color management which is there to serve the vast majority of users.
Here is Chris Murphy's wonderfully clear explanation of the debate and its eventual outcome:
To get color management enabled for dumb apps, we have to second guess their claimed usage of device space. Upon second guessing their claimed usage of device space, we now need an alternative way to specify when device space is really wanted. I don't see that we're going to get away with this by tagging the target files themselves, it seems inevitable we'll need an application or advance print dialog option that attaches job ticket metadata to get the behaviors we want/need.
The name of the option is still under debate. Here is Mike Sweet's comment on the default value of this print option, which of course is that color management is on:
The only change I would recommend is ... call it "normal" instead of "profiled". Not only is that more explicit about the intent (the normal mode) but you'll get fewer questions when users start playing with this new "expert" option they think will solve their current woe..
Edmund