[Desktop_printing] Gtk+ Printing Dialog

Kai-Uwe Behrmann ku.b at gmx.de
Wed Jan 25 11:23:26 PST 2006


Am 25.01.06, 16:40 +0100 schrieb Alexander Larsson:

> On Wed, 2006-01-25 at 12:52 +0100, Kai-Uwe Behrmann wrote: 
> > Alexander,
> > 
> > is the Gtk+ code intented to work inside Gtk only? 
> > Could you make it possible, to turn the planed printing dialog into 
> > something generic, useable for other toolkits as well? Maybe this can be 
> > achieved by modularising. So toolkit specific things are separate.
> > 
> > A unified dialog would be a chance to bring the printing behaviour in 
> > sync and take the desktop as one coordinated product.
> > Applictions like Scribus, Inkscape, Krita, Gimp, CinePaint should all 
> > behave in a similiar way. A common effort between KDE, Gnome, FLTK ...
> > developers would be much appreciated. Each of the above applications has 
> > unique features, which will not be copied easily. 
> > Adobe's CreativeSuite is a good example, how a group of appliations can 
> > work close together.
> 
> My task is to design a printing API for gtk+, including a dialog to use
> on Linux. This dialog will naturally be written in gtk+, since this it

Noone is suggeting to use pure cairo calls to draw buttons. But you will 
define some kind of API to use the dialog. But maybe I've got a wrong 
impression and you plan a plain dialog without much logic inside. 

If there is a critical mass of logic inside, this would be interessting to 
bring in sync with other toolkits. For instance options about how to deal 
with internet PDF's versus print PDF's. A internet PDF should be something 
about 72-90 dpi, for printing 200-300 dpi is more appropriate. Which of 
these modes is the default. Where to place a configuration so it applies 
to all applications equally.

Printers seems to have diffculties with plain PDF documents. A print 
dialog with its API could help in setting standards, which goes beyond MS 
Word.

> is specially written for gtk+. It might be possible for other
> applications to use a gtk+ dialog (i.e. OOo can do this with the gtk+
> file selector dialog), but that is the extent of cross-toolkit support
> the dialog it will have.

Ok, so you plan a plain frontend.

> I'm all for working together on the backend design and implementation
> though, so that all toolkits show the same printers and things like
> that.

Looks like there is a middlend missing, or I have overseen it.
 
regards
Kai-Uwe Behrmann
                                + development for color management 
                                + imaging / panoramas
                                + email: ku.b at gmx.de
                                + http://www.behrmann.name




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