[Digikam-devel] DigiKam Printing

[Gerhard Kulzer]

Am Montag, 19. Dezember 2005 16.22 schrieb Anders Lund:
> On Monday 19 December 2005 13:04, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> > Oi,
>
> Hi :)
>
> > Anders, I appreciate very much your work and your plans to improve
> > printing with DigiKam. Especially already thanks for the patches to fix
> > the memory problem:
> >
> > http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/digikam-devel/2005-December/002495.html
> >
> > I have applied them to our Mandriva package and suggested the fix as an
> > official update for Mandriva 2006. Probably by the end of 2005/beginning
> > of 2006 the update will come out.
>
> Cool, I'm pleased to know that it allready is used out there :)
>
> > Also great to hear that you want to make the interface better. My
> > remarks and ideas for this are:
> >
> > - Most important is to make the simple "print one photo per page
> >   full-bleed" working as easy as possible, as this is the most demanded
> >   task in photo printing. This includes:
> >
> >   o Have automatically set all margins to zero
> >   o Have automatically cropped the photo chosen to fit the width/height
> >     ratio of the chosen paper size (get paper sizes via KDE Print/CUPS),
> >     optionally let the user adjust the crop (as in the KIPI printing
> >     wizard).
> >   o Rotate the photo to have the long edge of the photo aligned with the
> >     long edge of the paper.
> >   o Save printer driver options separately, so that the user can save
> >     defaults for documents with CUPS/kprinter but for printing photos he
> >     has the photo defaults.
> >
> > - Make the KIPI printing wizard more flexible:
> >
> >   o Offer all paper sizes according to KDE Print (the PPD file of the
> >     print queue). Allow also to enter a custom page size if the printer
> >     allows that. Especially bigger than A4 must be possible.
> >   o For the possible photo size, once add an entry to fill up the whole
> >     page with one picture (currently one cannot print a photo full-bleed
> >     on A4 for example), and second, allow typing in a picture size
> >     manually. Also having 2-up, 4-up, ... with photo size optimized to
> >     the page size (with or without restricting aspect ratio to 2:3, 4:3,
> >     1:1.41, typed in custom, ...).
> >   o Offer a use-printed-page-as-album-page layout. Here horizontal and
> >     vertical page stay as they are, and are not rotated to fit the page
> >     or the place in the layout.
> >   o Put away the "Click next button to print" wizard page, embed the
> >     kprinter dialog here.
> >
> > - In the picture cropping dialog (in the image viewer) add 1:1.41
> >   (1:sqrt(2)) as an aspect ratio, as this is the ratio of all ISO A
> >   paper sizes (A4, A3, A5, A6, A0, ...). Add also some aspect ratios for
> >   common american sizes (Letter, Ledger, ...).
> >
> > - In the wizard for resizing batches of photos, in the options of the
> >   mode "Prepare to Print", there should be also common printer paper
> >   sizes, as A3, A4, A5, A6, Letter, Ledger, ... be listed. Under the
> >   resolutions the Epson/Canon-typical 360, 720, 1440, ... dpi are
> >   missing, also asymmetric resolutions, like 300x600 dpi.
> >
> > Especially note that with DigiKam being a KDE application you have
> > access to the great functionality of KDE Print, and here you can
> > especially get all capabilities of the print queue in use, especially
> > available paper sizes, margins, resolutions, ... If you have questions
> > about KDE Print, subscribe to the KDE Print mailing list
> >
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-print
> >
> > and/or contact the KDE Print maintainer, Cristian Tibirna (tibirna at
> > kde dot org).
>
> Thank you for all your inspiration! Some of those was already on my radar,
> others not. I'll keep your message in my notes for digikam printing.
>
> My plan is to fix a few more things in the image editor printing before I
> move on with the wizard, which i believe needs a reorganization - partially
> to make the pages more simple, partially to achieve a deeper integration
> with kprinter/CUPS.
>
> So far I added an option to automatically rotate the page so it follows the
> orientation of the image, there is a patch for the stable branch on this
> list. Adding a 'full bleede' option to the editor printing is a good idea,
> I'll do that soon.
>
> Other immediate plans I have for the editor printing is adding a way to
> position the image on the sheet, and improving the text options to include
> image comment and EXIF data in a string to be printed with the image.
>
> All in all, this means that there will be too many options for one printer
> dialog page, so I need to reorganize things. So now is the time to yell if
> you are afraid things might be too complicated...
>
> -anders

I have a rather simple question (which might be stupid, but I'll take the 
risk):
So far I never used digiKam printing nor did I use KDE printing because it is 
close to unusable for good photo printing. Gutenprint 5.0 from Gimp is what I 
use to my total satisfaction. A friend of mine and competition from Windows 
using calibration on Epson Photo Stylus 2100 with Epson drivers can't do any 
better, he sordidly admits. 

digiKam should use something comparable to Gutenprint at least. But why 
reinvent the wheel? Can't we interface to gimp-print? Even if digiKam could 
use kprinter to all its possibilities it would not be as good as it is as a 
photo application.

Gerhard