KDE4 printing: results of IRC meeting

[Thiago Macieira]

Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
>Thiago Macieira wrote:
>> I think that if you want to have a PDF printer, configure your CUPS to
>> do that. That's how you would do it in another OS.

>First, you don't seem to know that kprinter's "Print to PDF"-support
>does work completely independently from CUPS. And it has a dialog to
>set up "driver parameters". You don't seem to know it.

I know it's a virtual printer. CUPS doesn't know about it. It's easy to 
tell because no non-KDE application sees them.

So why is it a printer at all? If the KDE print dialog fakes it, maybe it 
shouldn't be a printer. I can also bet that usability tests show that 
people don't discover the "save as PDF" feature there.

It's not possible in Qt 4.3, but another option we discussed is the 
ability to add virtual printers: a printer name and a command to execute. 
This should be enough for most cases of "send as email" and "send fax" 
virtual printers. The function that instantiates and populates the 
QPrintDialog in KDE, setting defaults and all, would add these printers. 
So no functionality would be lost comparing KDE 3.5 to 4.1, in this area.

Though, again, I think that's the wrong place to have them.

So, yes, those features wouldn't be available for non-KDE applications. I 
don't think it is KDE's job to fill in other applications' shortcomings. 
Though, as a Troll, I do want Qt-based applications to kick a**, so if 
supporting print-to-pdf out of the box in QPrintDialog is the way to do 
it, so be it.

>Second, why did you pick to only reply to one of the 4 examples I gave
>you, when you asked to explain when the KDE print dialog was useful
>for non-KDE applications?

To avoid a huge quote for a 5-line reply. I selected the top, that's all.

>Third, the beauty of it was that the PDF printer was just there, and
>it "just worked". No need to "configure your CUPS" (and do *you* know
>how to do that?, do most users know how to do that??). And "you would
>do it in another OS" with lots of more pain before it would work. In
>KDE3 it worked out of the box, independent of CUPS, or LPRng, or LPD
>-- and you know want to advice users to configure their CUPS to do
>it for them to replace functionality that KDE4 looses?

No, I have no idea how to do it with CUPS. That says something about CUPS, 
not KDE.

It would be the KCM's job to do that, though.

KDE 4 wouldn't be losing the functionality anyways. The ability to export 
as PDF, PS, send fax or email is still there. It's the non-KDE 
applications that relied on kprinter to do its job that are losing 
functionality.

And, like someone else said in this thread, if you want to print a file, 
you don't want kprinter -- you want a document viewer like Okular.

>Fourth, why don't you advice me (or other users) to "configure your
>computer to use a another OS" once there is a feature that you don't
>want to support?

That's a lame argument too. This is not what I said.

I was merely comparing to other OSes. And I do think that a "PDF printer" 
option belongs in the CUPS configuration so that all programs benefit 
from it, not in the KDE client-side dialog.

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
    PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
    E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C  966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
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