KDE4 printing: results of IRC meeting

[Matt Rogers]

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On Sep 12, 2007, at 6:30 PM, Alex Merry wrote:

> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDEPrint/Meeting_2007_09_12
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDEPrint/Going_Forward
>
> First of all: the Printing kcm.  This partly works and partly doesn't.
> It should be noted that, providing it's basically in a usable state  
> for
> 4.0, we can improve it for 4.1 etc. without a problem, because it's  
> not
> bound by BC guarantees.
>
> I'm not sure it shouldn't move to kdebase/workspace, and that would  
> give
> us more time to fix it (since kdebase/runtime freezes sooner - I'm
> assuming runtime actually freezes on Oct 3rd).
>
> We decided in the meeting that we should go for a solution that relies
> heavily on QPrinter/QPrintDialog at this stage.
>
> The two must-have features for 4.0 that Qt doesn't provide (yet) are
> print preview and custom dialog options.  [We didn't get to discuss  
> too
> many technical details in the meeting, unfortunately.]
>
> Print Preview:
>   TT are working on a cross-platform solution for 4.4.  In the
>   meantime, we can print to a file and use Okular.
>
>   Technical considerations:
>     - we need to know when the printing is finished
>     - we probably want to make use of Qt 4.4's print preview for
>        KDE4.1, preferably without requiring any application changes
>        (or even recompiles)
>
>   UI considerations:
>     - We don't need File->Print Preview to be possible, necessarily,
>        if the option is available from the printing dialog
>
>   The only way I can see of doing this is to subclass QPrinter with a
>   doPreview(bool) method, which places an intermediate QPaintEngine
>   between the QPrinter and its internal QPaintEngine that catches the
>   end() call.
>
>   If we don't mind having some API that will be redundant by 4.1,
>   and possibly resulting inconsistent print previews between apps,
>   we can have something like my earlier suggestion:
>
>   [QK]Printer printer;
>   KPrintPreview preview(&printer);
>   doPrint(printer);
>   preview.exec();
>
>   where KPrintPreview sets printer to output to a file in its
>   constructor, and shows the preview in exec() [this way is
>   easier to implement].
>
> Extensible print dialog:
>   We can either implement our own dialog or we can use
>   QPrintDialog.  The latter option is ONLY POSSIBLE IF WE
>   REQUIRE Qt 4.3.2 OR LATER!!!  TT are exporting the
>   method qt_printdialog_add_extension_tab() in 4.3.2.
>   This will be proper API in 4.4, but we can use this in the
>   meantime from a KPrintDialog class.
>
>   Note that this won't necessarily help us with the print
>   preview issue, because the widget can only be added
>   as a tab.
>
> Thomas Zander would like us to end up using QPrinter and QPrintDialog
> exclusively from programs (NB: this does NOT affect the kcm).  The  
> only
> thing we'd lose in the long run from not having our own KPrinter class
> should be arbitrary page selection from with the printing dialog (it's
> still possible from within the application - such as checkboxes on a
> page thumbnail view: there's a "selection" option in the print  
> dialog).
> I think we would gain more than we lost by using QPrintDialog in the
> long run, especially as TT seem to be quite aware of its current
> shortcomings and are actively fixing it up for Qt4.4.
>
> This is my understanding of the situation.  I have the remainder of  
> this
> week, limited time next week and an unknown amount of time the week
> after to work on this.
>
> One last thing: before people start complaining about loss of
> functionality, we have, so far, two coders who know next to nothing
> about printing, one or two more with limited time and little knowledge
> of the kde print codebase, a printing guru with little knowledge of  
> the
> kde print codebase and maintainer who has very little time to spare on
> this.  And a deadline in three weeks.
>
> Alex

This sounds like a solid plan considering the limited amount of time  
and manpower available to us. We can always make things better for  
later KDE 4 releases.

Thanks for your efforts here.
- --
Matt


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