AW: [Kde-print-devel] Status of KDEprint in 4.0, and offer of help

[John Layt]

On Thursday 06 September 2007, Alex Merry wrote:
> > Which raises the question: do win32 users not see a native dialog
> > with the current print setup?
>
> I'm not even sure how well printing will work on windows.

I see no signs in the code so far of any win32 support, they might get the 
dialog, but it wouldn't have any real printers listed (except maybe if they 
had CUPS for windows).  Apps would probably have to ifdef in QPrinter if they 
want printing on win32.  On Mac I suspect things are in better shape as they 
use CUPS (own it even :-).

> > I'm still not convinced we should not use QPrintDialog, it would save
> > us a lot of problems in the future. How often is the current print
> > dialog extended by application specific things? Is this worth
>
> A lot: http://lxr.kde.org/ident?i=KPrintDialogPage.  I count 22 separate
> programs, plugins or libraries appearing to create custom pages.

Jeepers, that's a lot of functionality to lose...

> > wrapping QPrinter instead of inherit it? Maybe we could make a list
> > and ask our Norwegian friends to have a look at that (pre/post hooks,
> > add a custom widget*, ?).

Yeah, this should move in parallel with the other efforts, so we can make an 
informed decision.

> Cristian Tibirna is the current maintainer, but I get the impression he
> doesn't have a lot of time to devote to this.  However, at least John
> Layt and I are obviously willing to work on printing.  I'd certainly be
> happy to work on it in the longer term, but neither of us is a printing
> expert, or even that familiar with the considerable KDE Print codebase.

Well, I can make no long term commitment to KDEPrint, I've already made other 
promises to Marble I should keep (sorry takat!), and my 4.1 libraries project 
was going to be scanning.  But I recognise the importance of sorting this out 
and so I'm here for the 4.0 timeframe at least.

I will confess to almost running away after I started poking around the 
codebase, its extent is daunting given its undocumented state.  I'm used to 
such "challenge's" in my professional life (35 year old undocumented COBOL is 
just the pits), but normally they're paying me bucketloads to sort it out :-)

> I'd hate to see KDE's excellent printing system go down the pan because
> of lack of interest in maintaining it.

Ditto.

Cheers!

John.


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