A Suggestion for KDEPrint

[Karl Scheel]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the prompt replies. :-*

Okay, I looked at escputil by typing "escputil -h" from a command line 
shell; it appears to have almost everything that its Windows counterpart 
has. I now would like answers to the following questions:

   1. Could it be invoked automatically whenever a job is sent to the
      printer? This should be one of the side benefits of having
      utilities such as escputil plug into KDEPrint.
   2. The Windows equivalent has a nice graphical front end that pops-up
      whenever a job is sent to the printer; it shows the amount of ink
      available, and has a progress indicator. Although the command line
      utilities will do the job, they appear so crude and archaic to
      Windows users, and should therefore be avoided. Could graphical
      front ends such as this be made available to plug-ins such as
      escputil without their being dependant directly on the Qt libraries?

Thanks in advance.

Karl

P.S. Although some of you may get the wrong impression about me because 
of the smiley I just sent you, I am not one of those, so please don't 
ask me what I am doing tonight!

Michael Goffioul wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I have some good news and bad news for you. :-)
>
> Let's start with the good news:
> 1) there's already a command-line tool to monitor Epson printers,
>    included in gimp-print, and called "escputil"
> 2) KDEPrint already includes a plugin mechanism that allows to easily
>    build UI around existing command-line tools, of course this
>    requires a little bit of coding, but this results in a nice
>    integration of the utility into KDE printer manager
> 3) I demonstrated the use of such plugin mechanism on escputil,
>    this means you can already monitors (locally connected) Epson
>    printers from the KDE print manager
>
> And now the bad news:
> 1) this is not available on KDE-2.2.2, you'll have to upgrade to
>    3.x
>
> Michael.
>
> Till Kamppeter wrote:
>
>> One should have something which allows plugging in arbitrary command 
>> line tools, as escputil for Epson or ink 
>> (http://home.arcor.de/markusheinz/ink.html) for HP. AFAIR is on the 
>> MTink page (http://xwtools.automatix.de/ also a command line tool for 
>> Canon inkjet printers.
>>
>>    Till
>>
>> Karl Scheel wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings, KDEPrint Developers!
>>>
>>> A little more than one month ago, I tried to download the utility, 
>>> /kepsontools/. However, when I tried to install it, I discovered 
>>> that it was incompatible with my version of KDE (i.e., 2.2.2); it 
>>> was the only version that was available from the download site, and 
>>> required the older /Qt-1.2/ libraries. I tried contacting the author 
>>> of this program directly after following a link from the download 
>>> site to the author's own Web site to try to get an updated version. 
>>> However, the author informed me that he is no longer involved with 
>>> the project.
>>>
>>> /kepsontools/ is a utility that performs the following functions for 
>>> Epson Stylus Color ink-jet printers:
>>>
>>>    1. monitoring the ink levels,
>>>    2. cleaning the print head,
>>>    3. aligning the print head,
>>>    4. printing test pages.
>>>
>>> A similar utility has been taken for granted for several years by 
>>> Windows users.
>>>
>>> The fact that this utility must rely on specific Qt libraries is in 
>>> my opinion, ridiculous; it means that it must be rewritten with each 
>>> release of a new KDE version, which occurs quite frequently. I would 
>>> like to know if KDEPrint could be modified in the following manner:
>>>
>>>    1. Give it the ability to accommodate /kepsontools/ and similar
>>>       utilities as plug-ins.
>>>    2. Provide a simple, universal API for these utilities so that they
>>>       are no longer directly dependant upon the Qt libraries.
>>>    3. Let KDEPrint serve as the liaison between these utilities and the
>>>       Qt libraries, so that compatibility is achieved regardless of the
>>>       KDE version.
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for your consideration.
>>>
>>> Karl,
>>> Toronto, Canada
>>
>
>