Printing in KDE4 (Was: Fwd: Re: Requesting feature freeze exemption for Gwenview)

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Aaron J. Seigo schrieb:
> On Monday 03 September 2007, Christopher Blauvelt wrote:
>> Ditto
> 
> ok, so step 0 would seem to be this: go through the printing system in 
> trunk/kdelibs/ by testing each of the features in the UI and cataloging which 
> do not work properly ... i'm sure we'll have a collection of user interface 
> errors, cups integration problems (esp with the newest version?), porting 
> bungles ...
> 
> if the printing experience Work(tm) from the perspective of a user, we should 
> be ok for 4.0 ... this would also, i would imagine, be a great way to get 
> more aware of what the printing system in kde is capable of. i also know that 
> Kurt has a pretty complete knowledge of things there, so he may be a good 
> source of feature related guidance?

I can also offer you (and anybody else) this:

   ======================================================================
   *Tomorrow* evening I'll boot into a Live CD, and write a script or two
   that you can use as a CUPS backend ("2file" and/or "2dir"). These can
   then be used to test PostScript printing without actually having a
   printer installed. (We can savely assume that KDEPrint will work with
   non-PostScript printers too, once it works with PS ones -- and if it
   doesn't, there is a non-KDE problem with the printer driver...)
   ======================================================================

Instead of going to a physical printer, the readied printfile will go to
a specific location on your harddisk, from where you can view it with any
PostScript viewer (I don't assume you guys do have PCL viewers installed),
or with an editor to see if print options where somehow stuffed into the
file...

The printers then may be installed like this:

   lpadmin -p fileprinter \
           -v 2file:/tmp/kde4print.testfile.prn \
           -E \
           -L "on my harddisk" \
           -D "virtual printer to test KDEPrint" \
           -P /path/to/any/postscriptprinter.ppd

   mkdir /tmp/kde4print_testdir
   lpadmin -p dirprinter \
           -v 2dir:/tmp/kde4print_testdir \
           -E \
           -L "on my harddisk" \
           -D "virtual printer to test KDEPrint" \
           -P /path/to/any/postscriptprinter.ppd

With the 2file backend each next job will overwrite the previous one
(saves you disk space; relieves you from deleting testfiles). With the
2dir backend, each new job will be saved in said directory under a uniq
name.

With these two (or more) virtual printers, you'll be able to test 98%
of kprinter's functionality, including job management, user access
rights, job options, the kaddprinterwizzard, Qt's font embedding, etc).

This should help anybody willing (and with time) to test and/or to code
contributing in a meaningful way (no more excuses like "but... but I
don't own a printer", guys!).


Cheers,
Kurt

-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
A RICOH Company  ...........................  D-70327 Stuttgart/Germany