[Fwd: Re: [kde] Printer support in KDE 4.3]

[James Richard Tyrer]

Post to other list contains my idea for KPrinter-4.x.y

I am available to help with this project, health permitting.

I make no secret of the fact that I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome:

http://www.cdc.gov/CFS/cfssymptomsHCP.htm

and that this greatly limits my ability to write code, but not to design 
applications.  The main problem is: "impaired ... concentration".

Please also note "irritability".  I take medication for that, but some 
days ("mood swings") I am irritable.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [kde] Printer support in KDE 4.3
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:11:58 -0700
From: James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj at acm.org>
Reply-To: kde at mail.kde.org
To: kde at mail.kde.org
References: 
<880dece00906121201t715817c6m7d8690731ee6bf86 at mail.gmail.com> 
<4A336673.10608 at acm.org> 
<880dece00906130150m55375611w5731848c24e01996 at mail.gmail.com> 
<200906131623.20447.robin at binro.org>

Robin Atwood wrote:
> On Saturday 13 June 2009, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>>>> What features, specifically, do you like? Add them to the bug I
>>>>  filed!
>>> The specific feature which I like is that "Properties" allow you 
>>> to completely control printer features based on a PPD file.
> 
> Am I missing something here?

Yes. :-)

> You can specify all the properties from the "Properties" button on
> the print dialogue, 

Actually, not.  The issue is which properties you can specify and how
this information is obtained.

> although they do not seem to get remembered.
> 
If you have a printer with more than one print mode or more than one
print resolution, can you set that in "Properties" like you can with OO?

The best example is printing to PDF.  In KPrinter (for KDE-3.5.x) select
"Print to File (PDF)" and click the "Properties" button, notice that the
dialog has a "Driver Settings" tab.  This tab only exists for "Print to
File (PDF)".  Now open the Print dialog in OpenOffice and click the
"Properties" button.  The "Device" tab is always there.

In KPrinter the options in the "Driver Settings" tab for "Print to File
(PDF)" exist because the options from the "ghostpdf.ppd" file were hard
coded into KPrinter.  In OpenOffice the options in the "Device" tab as
well as the "Paper" tab are obtained by reading the PPD file for the
selected printer.  Clearly, this is a better design and should be how a
new KPrinter is designed.

So for my old Epson line printer (in OO), I can open the "Driver" tab
and select the print resolution.  How do you do that with KDE-3 or KDE-4?

And also note that OO remembers the properties settings.  I would
suggest that for KDE it would be a really useful feature if this was
remembered per application (with a global update option in SystemSettings)

-- 
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch