Foomatic 3.0 and KDE Print

[Till Kamppeter]

Michael Goffioul wrote:
 >
 > This sounds nice, but how do you "synchronize" the global PrintOut
 > option, and its components (native driver options)? Is there any
 > precedence? In a GUI, I can see a number of things to take care of:
 > for example if the user change the global PrintOut, and one of its
 > component. From a GUI point of view, it wouldn't be user-friendly
 > to not see the components being changed automatically when you change
 > the PrintOut, so the PPD file should also contain info to link the
 > PrintOut to the set of driver options (as the PPD file is the "only"
 > thing available to the GUI).
 >

All member options of "PrintoutMode" (options controlled by
"PrintoutMode") have a choice named "Controlled by 'PrintoutMode'". When
this choice is selected and only then, "PrintoutMode" gives the value
for this option, otherwise the selected value is used, regardless of the
setting of "PrintoutMode". See my postings on the foomatic-devel list
about composite options and also the appropriate part of Foomatic's
README file:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/pipermail/foomatic-devel/2002q4/thread.html
     Threads about "Composite Options" or "Collective Options" (older
     term).

http://www.linuxprinting.org/pipermail/foomatic-devel/2002q4/001220.html
     Announcement of Foomatic 2.9.1

http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic2.9/foomatic-db-engine/README
     Section "Composite Options" in the end of the file
     Section "Example for a Foomatic-generated PPD file" (also in the end)
     shows PPD file format

So you do not need to change the setting of the member options when you
change "PrintoutMode". You even should not do so, because otherwise a
change of "PrintoutMode" by a non-KDE program would not have any effect
as no member option has the setting "Controlled by 'PrintoutMode'" any more.

 > I don't know what you mean exactly by unprintable borders,

I mean that what you simply call "margins". This is the area at the
borders of the paper where the printer hardware cannot print on.

 > but
 > KDEPrint has full margin support since 3.1, they are extracted
 > from the PPD file (ImageableArea),

Doing this is absolutely correct.

 > and can be customized by the
 > user. Today, I fixed several problems like top/bottom margin
 > inversion, rounding errors, and the "Text" margins being specified
 > by 2 values only (top/bottom and left/right).
 >

OK.

     Till