Replacing KPrinter with QPrinter? (was: Status of KDEprint in 4.0, and offer of help)

[Alex Merry]

On Friday 07 Sep 2007, Thomas Zander wrote:
> I was looking at things as well, and I had in mind a slightly
> different approach, let me know what you think of this;
> we create a separate project that aims to kill off KPrinter (the
> class) in favor of using QPrinter everywhere.
> This probably includes altering Q[Abstract]PrintDialog to allow it to
> have a application-specific dialog, as well as a way to show a dialog
> while printing with the current page number on it.
> I'm sure some features that are now being handled by ghostscript have
> to be re-implemented in this extention to QPrinter as well.
> The aim of this project is to get rid of the notion that QPrinter is
> not good enough for KDE. As I'm personally puzzled what exactly the
> issues are and the issues we are talking about seem to be easy enough
> to solve correctly without having to have a KPrinter we are stuck
> with for the test of KDE4 again.

Features missing in QPrinter (which are not easily added without at 
least extending QPrinter and implementing QPrintEngine and 
QAbstractPrintDialog):

* Print preview
* Printing a list of pages (such as 1,4,6-8) or the current page
* Custom margins
* Straightforward printer options (try clicking "properties" for a 
printer in the print dialog of the Qt assistant program, and doing the 
same in kolourpaint)
* "Special" printers (like Send Fax via KFax) independent of eg: CUPS
* Integration with the KDE print management system (ties in with the 
above two points)

I guess it comes down to how much value you place on these features.

Alex



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