[Printing-architecture] Common Printing Dialog: Print to (PDF) file

[Printing-architecture] Common Printing Dialog: Print to (PDF) file

[Till Kamppeter]

Hi,

the final design planning is that all applications should have "Export 
to PDF ..." in their file menus (like OpenOffice.org) with a dedicated 
dialog, similar to the CPD but yet to be designed by OpenUsability.

As this will take time and the current Qt and GTK printing dialogs 
contain a "Print to File" facility which appears as an extra print 
queue, we should implement such a "Print to File" queue also in the 
Common Printing dialog, so that we get it quickly into the distros 
without having a regression due to this feature missing.

For the implementation note that the current dialogs do not send the job 
into a CUPS queue for "Print to File" (we do not use facilities like the 
cups-pdf package). "Print to File" opens a "Save as ..." dialog when 
clicking on "Print" in the printing dialog. Then the user chooses where 
to put his file. This process is completely done by the printing dialog 
running as the calling user, nothing done by CUPS for it. At least GTK 
allows to choose between PostScript and PDF for such a file. For your 
implementation PDF would be the most important, PostScript can perhaps 
be dropped if it makes it too complicated.

It would be great if you could implement that in the Common Printing 
Dialog, ideally with a possibility for the application to suppress this 
feature (Lars, perhaps this needs an additional boolean parameter in the 
CPDAPI).

With this we will really be feature-complete.

As soon as the print-to-file dialog design is completed and it makes it 
into most applications, we can drop this feature from the printing 
dialog again.

    Till

Re: [Printing-architecture] Common Printing Dialog: Print to (PDF) file

[Per Hermansson]

Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the final design planning is that all applications should have "Export 
> to PDF ..." in their file menus (like OpenOffice.org) with a dedicated 
> dialog, similar to the CPD but yet to be designed by OpenUsability.
>
> As this will take time and the current Qt and GTK printing dialogs 
> contain a "Print to File" facility which appears as an extra print 
> queue, we should implement such a "Print to File" queue also in the 
> Common Printing dialog, so that we get it quickly into the distros 
> without having a regression due to this feature missing.
>
> For the implementation note that the current dialogs do not send the 
> job into a CUPS queue for "Print to File" (we do not use facilities 
> like the cups-pdf package). "Print to File" opens a "Save as ..." 
> dialog when clicking on "Print" in the printing dialog. Then the user 
> chooses where to put his file. This process is completely done by the 
> printing dialog running as the calling user, nothing done by CUPS for 
> it. At least GTK allows to choose between PostScript and PDF for such 
> a file. For your implementation PDF would be the most important, 
> PostScript can perhaps be dropped if it makes it too complicated.
This part has been implemented in the GTK version of the CPD and is 
available in the bazaar repo.
Better late then never :-)
> It would be great if you could implement that in the Common Printing 
> Dialog, ideally with a possibility for the application to suppress 
> this feature (Lars, perhaps this needs an additional boolean parameter 
> in the CPDAPI).
>
No such checks are made yet but it should be easy to fix if we decide to 
update the CPDAPI.

/Per

Re: [Printing-architecture] Common Printing Dialog: Print to (PDF) file

[Hal V. Engel]

On Wednesday 19 August 2009 02:52:06 am Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> the final design planning is that all applications should have "Export
> to PDF ..." in their file menus (like OpenOffice.org) with a dedicated
> dialog, similar to the CPD but yet to be designed by OpenUsability.
> 
> As this will take time and the current Qt and GTK printing dialogs
> contain a "Print to File" facility which appears as an extra print
> queue, 

In Qt4 there are two of these queues, one each for PDF and PostScript files.

> we should implement such a "Print to File" queue also in the
> Common Printing dialog, so that we get it quickly into the distros
> without having a regression due to this feature missing.
> 
> For the implementation note that the current dialogs do not send the job
> into a CUPS queue for "Print to File" (we do not use facilities like the
> cups-pdf package). "Print to File" opens a "Save as ..." dialog when
> clicking on "Print" in the printing dialog  Then the user chooses where
> to put his file. 

In GTK yes but the Qt4 print dialogs do not open a separate "Save as.." dialog 
since the regular print dialog has an "Output file:" widget that is activated 
when when of the print to file queues is selected and there is no need for a 
separate "Save as.." dialog.  The "Print" button will cause the file to be 
created/saved.  This seems a little cleaner to me than having a separate "Save 
as.." dialog.

> This process is completely done by the printing dialog
> running as the calling user, nothing done by CUPS for it. At least GTK
> allows to choose between PostScript and PDF for such a file. For your
> implementation PDF would be the most important, PostScript can perhaps
> be dropped if it makes it too complicated.
> 
> It would be great if you could implement that in the Common Printing
> Dialog, ideally with a possibility for the application to suppress this
> feature (Lars, perhaps this needs an additional boolean parameter in the
> CPDAPI).
> 
> With this we will really be feature-complete.
> 
> As soon as the print-to-file dialog design is completed and it makes it
> into most applications, we can drop this feature from the printing
> dialog again.
> 
>     Till
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Printing-architecture mailing list
> Printing-architecture@lists.linux-foundation.org
> https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/printing-architecture
> 

Re: [Printing-architecture] Common Printing Dialog: Print to (PDF) file

[Per Hermansson]

Hal V. Engel wrote:
>> we should implement such a "Print to File" queue also in the
>> Common Printing dialog, so that we get it quickly into the distros
>> without having a regression due to this feature missing.
>>
>> For the implementation note that the current dialogs do not send the job
>> into a CUPS queue for "Print to File" (we do not use facilities like the
>> cups-pdf package). "Print to File" opens a "Save as ..." dialog when
>> clicking on "Print" in the printing dialog  Then the user chooses where
>> to put his file. 
>>     
>
> In GTK yes but the Qt4 print dialogs do not open a separate "Save as.." dialog 
> since the regular print dialog has an "Output file:" widget that is activated 
> when when of the print to file queues is selected and there is no need for a 
> separate "Save as.." dialog.  The "Print" button will cause the file to be 
> created/saved.  This seems a little cleaner to me than having a separate "Save 
> as.." dialog.
>
>   
This makes a good motivation for migrating to the real "Print to file" 
dialog when designed.
The CPD isn't designed for exporting to files so the current approach 
offers a good trade off.
If we make the current implementation too good no one will want to 
switch when the new dialog is released :-)

/Per