HELP WANTED: kdeprint with GNUlpr

[James Richard Tyrer]

Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Goffioul Michael wrote:
> 
>> The main answer James has faced until now is "embed fonts" or
>> "this is not my fault". Indeed, where's the fault?
>> - KDEPrint for generating preview that may not correspond to
>>   what'll be printed
>> - CUPS for not setting GS_LIB variable correctly (or not trying
>>   to do so)
>> - KDE for letting the user install fonts in non system directories
> 
> 
> I think, the best solution is that KDE embeds all fonts (except the 
> standard PS fonts, but perhaps them even too) into the PostScript by 
> default. The option to turn this off should have warning like "only turn 
> this off if you really know what you are doing".

The problem with font embedding is the performance penalty both when you print from the 
application (generate the PS data) and again when you print to to printer.  And remember, 
Qt still does not properly render TrueType fonts if they are embedded.

Such a warning should be inaccurate.  Unless you are using a network printer -- in which 
case it is the network administrator's problem to decide how to handle fonts -- there 
shouldn't be any problem.  You see, I have had problems with this too, and this isn't 
because I didn't know what I was doing, it was because of bugs in various software.  I 
wouldn't say that there was a bug in the print filter that comes with GNUlpr because 
having to make minor changes to scripts is a system integration issue -- I installed if 
from source and so I needed to do that.  But, there are bugs in Qt, Bash and CUPS.

If not for these bugs, there would be no problem if fonts were correctly installed and 
those that don't know how to install them by hand would use the KDE Font Installer.

So, yes there should be a warning, but the warning should say that it might not work 
because of bugs in various non-KDE software.  If you use LPR and my two patches and have 
your fonts installed correctly it should work perfectly with one exception (the Times vs 
Times-Roman problem regressed when I upgraded Qt).

And, it wouldn't hurt to warn people that their network setup has to be able to find fonts 
-- the best way is to have all of the fonts on a font server on the same system as the 
print server.  In any case, the print server needs to know where to find them.  My 
solution will also work correctly on a network provided that all of the fonts are on a 
network font server and the print server knows where to find them.  Users on a network can 
NOT install local fonts without complications.

--
JRT