KDE4 printing: results of IRC meeting

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Thiago Macieira wrote:

> So why is it a printer at all? 

What else would you make it then, if not a printer?

> If the KDE print dialog fakes it, maybe it 
> shouldn't be a printer. 

OK; but what else?

It is the best place you can think of without a real usability study.
Where else can you provide a unified, generic way to create PDFs from
*any* application?!

> I can also bet that usability tests show that 
> people don't discover the "save as PDF" feature there.

>From what personal observations I made + also what feedback I received,
a *lot* of people do discover the virtual printers on their own, when
they start to use KDE and need to print from a KDE app for their first
time. And usually they are delighted about the feature and many start
telling and showing their friends and family about it.

The reason for this easy discoverability is that without or before a
(CUPS) printer ever being installed, these virtual printers are the
only ones in the drop-down list and therefore easy to spot.

I'd be really curious about a usability test that would result in a
definite answer about "the best way to provide and show to the user a
generic way of creating PDFs from any application"?

Is Trolltech considering to run such a study?

> 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. 

That would be great; and if it is easy to add, it should be in as soon
as possible.

You may want to consider to go beyond "a printer name and a command
to execute". You may want to keep it flexible, and support different
commandline parameters of said command to execute. You may want to
provide the full story that KDEPrint currently provides, where one
can create a GUI to set all the commandline parameters:

  * start "kaddprinterwizard --kdeconfig", click "Commands", select the
    "PostScript to PDF Converter" (*not* "PDF Writer (needs Ghostscript)"
    click "Edit command"-icon button, click "Edit command" ...
    You now see the secret sauce that is lubing the "Print to file (PDF)"
    virtual printer. The other commands you can look at there are what
    makes the prefilters tick.

> 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.

At least any *idea* where else to provide that function then?

> 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. 

Again, I beg to disagree. KDE does it at many different places too.

Also, a commandline app that...

 ...can start a GUI to configure print options,

 ...select the printer,

 ...connect to a specific CUPS server,

 ...save specific sets of print options as profiles under their
    own name (like "hi quality foto printing", "b/w draft quality
    pamphlet mode") for easy re-use,

 ...without the need to open an application,

 ...and lastly (batch-)print the file(s)

is a must-have for those who do print often (not you). And to have that
commandline app to run without GUI (with prior configuring it the way
you need it *with* the GUI), is only the logical extension of its func-
tionality and the "icing on the KDE printing cake".

I don't want to have it "like other apps", or "like other OSes".
I want it *better*, hence different. Otherwise, I'd use the other
apps and other OSes....

And at this place, it has nothing to do with "other applications'
shortcomings", but everything with "the user wants it, the user
gets it". It can be configured to behave like that... we always do
this  :-)

>> 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.

No, it rather say something about your personal needs regarding
printing....

Whatever.

But please don't give such an invalid advice like "do it with CUPS
instead" then, and don't try to sell it as the way forward for
KDE4Printing.

> 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.

What a stupid argument. (Sorry.)

No, it's the *users* that loose 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.

That "someone" likely didn't speak on behalf of everyone (he surely
didn't for me), and for every occasion and use-case.

Sometimes I want to print files (multiple files at once), without
starting up an application, and loading them there first, but I
still want to have a GUI that lets me configure the print options:
simply because selecting driver options for a multi-featured printer
is easier and faster with the kprinter GUI (though *I* know how to
do it on the commandline too, but it is awkward to learn; and I bet
that I can easily outperform here *any* commandline guru whom I
teach the CUPS commandline first, and then let him train and excer-
cise this, and this thing only, for a year in a slave camp :-)

So this use case has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with any
"non-KDE applications whom we enjoy to take away the functionality
they sucked off us anyway".

I mentioned it already 3 times in this thread, but it seems to need
a 4th in order to acknowledge it.

>> 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.

No, I readily admit didn't say this (and I never said so with my
rhethoric question either). I only spun your line of argument one
level further to show its inherent "strength". Sorry for the
implied polemic then.

> 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.

Why only for PDF then? Why not any other file conversion too then?


-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
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