KDE4 printing: results of IRC meeting

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Thomas Zander wrote:

> Yesterday I realized that the actual problem was not really clearly defined. I 
> bet that the majority of kde-core-devel readers just get a general "it don't 
> work" feeling; so let me go over that.
> 
> INTRODUCTION
> KDEPrint is build around a basic assumption that QPrinter generates 
> postscript.  You can see this by the fact that ghostscript is used heavily. 
> For example to convert to pdf, but also to do 'filters'.
> 
> With the introduction of Qt4 this situation changed considerably; QPrinter is 
> now capable of generating not only postscript, but also PDF natively. And 
> since we want printing to work on Windows as well that adds the 'feature' 
> that QPrinter directly talks to the printer driver and the output of that 
> tends to be some sort of binary printer specific format.

A few questions and thoughts about PDF export by Qt...

- Will the "write to PDF" or whatever it's called ("export to PDF"?)
  provided by Qt4.x be configurable?

- If yes, can it export PDF/X (optimized for printing)? If no, does
  it export PDF/X?

- If it does PDF/X, is there an included way to "verify" the format,
  and check for problems before printing ("pre-flight checker")?

- If no, does it at least embed fonts in a reliable way?

You may be well aware that "PDF" and "PDF" is not the same format
nowadays, and that lots of PDFs are difficult to print reliably on
all printer types (however, this is relatively easy to solve, if
the generating of PDFs follows a few rules -- and PDF/X is an indu-
stry standard to provide these rules).

If Qt4 does not yet support PDF/X, it is a good idea to get in touch
with the Scribus guys. They have a very well working and reliable
way to produce fully compliant PDF/X, and their files pass any pre-
flight check that professional print jobs may run against them (in-
cluding those that check for color profiles).

AFAIK, they developed their PDF/X support from scratch by following
the specification (and Scribus even was the first product in the
industry that shipped a working PDF/X support -- well before the
first Adobe product with it hit the market). So if Trolltech were
in need of and looking for Qt-friendly PDF/X experts, Scribus is
the place to go. Maybe even to the extend of re-using their code...
(and if that's not feasible for Trolltech for whatever reason, it
could still be an option for KDE).

> PROBLEM
> Due to the change of input most of the kdeprint will no longer be sufficient 
> for all cases where the application doesn't generate postscript.  Which is 
> KOffice and all apps on Windows.

(...and if re-using Scribus' PDF/X expertise and code is not feasible
for Qt and Trolltech for whatever reason, it could still be an option
for KDE.


-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
A RICOH Company  ...........................  D-70327 Stuttgart/Germany