[Desktop_printing] PPD settings vs IPP options

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Feb 10 12:18 Till Kamppeter wrote (shortened):
> I suggest the following for the apps:
> 
> - On the editing screen of a document-producing application there should
> be a fine gray frame to mark the imageable area of the currently chosen
> printer (switchable).

Which means that the user must choose the "printer" before
creating the page layout.

This is exactly the right ordering when you think about "printer"
in a more general way as "output device" which can be for example:

* normal desktop monitor or video projector
  - disply pixel size (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024)
  - color depth (1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 16, 24, 32 bits per pixel)

* printer
  - paper dimension and imageable area
    (read PaperDimension and ImageableArea from PPD
     don't use PageSize and PageRegion for this!)
  - color model
    (read ColorDevice and DefaultColorSpace from PPD)
  - resolution
    (read Resolution from PPD or DefaultResolution if
     no Resolution entry is available in PPD)

* generic: use reasonable defaults like
  - imageable area is the intersection of the imageable areas
    of various typical printers for A4 and Letter 
  - 4 bits per pixel (16 fixed colors which are choosen so that
    the resulting 16 levels of gray should be distinguishable
    on a printout on a usual b/w laser printer)
  - 600 dpi resolution


> - There should be a print integrity check, which tells the user whether
> there are graphical elements in the document which are beyond the
> imageable area of the current printer, whether there are pages with a
> paper size not available on the printer,

If I understand you correctly this still means to have the
document layout somehow fixed bound to a particular printer.

What I have in mind is to have a somewhat "fuzzy" document layout
which fits automatically into the usual imageable areas for
A4, Letter and perhaps even Legal paper.

Of course this does not mean that you cannot create a fixed
layout for one particular output device but schouldn't it be
possible for very most of the usual documents to have stretchable
spaces between the major parts of a document?

For example the usual business letter could have a layout like:

# denotes the edges of the paper
- and | are the borders of the major parts of the document
. and : denote stretchable spaces.
* denote non-stretchable space (i.e. fixed positions)

The stretchable spaces between the major parts of the document
let it fit automatically into the actual imageable area of the
particular printer if the paper size is A4 or Letter (and perhaps
even Legal).

(ASCII art, you need to use a fixed-with font in your mailer
 to get it correctly displayed):

  ########################################################
  #         *           *                *               #
  #  ----------------   *    --------------------------  #
  #..| company logo |...*....| header of the document |..#
  #  ----------------   *    --------------------------  #
  #         :           *        :                       #
  #         :           *        :                       #
  #    --------------------------------                  #
  #    | addressee                    |                  #
  #****| of the                       |..................#
  #    | letter                       |                  #
  #    --------------------------------                  #
  #                     *                                #
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #
  #..| salutation                                     |..#
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #
  #                     :                                #   
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #                 
  #  | first paragraph                                |  #
  #..| of the                                         |..#
  #  | body                                           |  #
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #
  #                     :                                #
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #
  #  | last paragraph                                 |  #   
  #..| of the                                         |..#  
  #  | body                                           |  #
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #                 
  #                     :                                # 
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #
  #..| greetings                                      |..#
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #
  #                     :                                #
  #                     :                                #
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #
  #..| footer of the document                         |..#
  #  --------------------------------------------------  #
  #                     *                                #
  ########################################################

Note the fixed position of the addressee regarding the
top and left edges of the paper so that it fits for envelopes
with transparency for the addressee.

I made our YaST printer testpage this way.
It expands automatically to fill up the whole imageable area
of the particular printer and it scales and moves all its
major parts automatically so that the same PostScript code
works for any normal paper format A5, A4, A3, Letter, Legal,
Ledger, ...


> - There should be a bw-view button, so that one can quickly switch the
> screen view of the document to bw ore grayscale, to visualize problems
> which can occur when faxing or printing in black and white.

Wouldn't it make sense to let the application produce PostScript
and then display this with an appropriate x11* Ghostscript device
(x11 x11cmyk x11cmyk2 x11cmyk4 x11cmyk8 x11gray2 x11gray4 x11mono)?
This way the user may better see what actually will be printed.


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5      Mail: jsmeix at suse.de
90409 Nuernberg, Germany                    WWW: http://www.suse.de/