[Desktop_printing] PPD settings vs IPP options

Bastian, Waldo waldo.bastian at intel.com
Tue Feb 14 12:59:54 PST 2006


>Don't get confused by my proposal for a "fuzzy" document layout.
>It is only meant as one possible way to produce a document which
>fits automatically on similar paper sizes (like A4 and Letter).
>
>Of course the user can decide what he wants and what not.
>If the user wants it, he can of course create a document
>which can be printed correctly only on one particular
>printer model, but perhaps not all users always want this ;-)
>
>Of course if the document contains maps/diagrams/whatever
>which require exact measurements, at least those parts
>must not be scaled automatically.
>
>Again see my business letter example:
>There is no need to scale the contents of the major parts
>of the document, only the spaces between the major parts
>would scale/stretch to print on A4 or Letter (in particular
>there would be no reflowing text inside a paragraph).
>I made it intentionally this way because a general scaling of
>a whole page content to fit it into the actual imageable area
>is very problematic because the overall size and the width
>to height ratio would change (measurements become wrong
>and circles become ellipses and so on).

The fuzzy document layout seems overly complicated for something that I
don't think is very important for many end users. The reason I say that
is that if you care about exact scale (exact color?) you tend to be
aware of the paper size and printer limitations. The other case is where
you get this form for a strange paper size and you just want to make
sure that everything ends up on paper somehow.

Based on the above, I would think that a model that should work fairly
well is that the application makes some generic assumptions about the
output device based on the user's paper selection in the application.
Then when the user starts printing and has selected a printer, the
application should be able to tell when the selected printer is not able
to support the assumptions made. (E.g. selected margins not supported by
the printer) The application can then point out the problem and suggest
the user some corrective actions (e.g. scale to fit page/margins, let
user select different paper/margins in application, print as-is anyway,
...)

Wouldn't that be a lot easier?

Cheers,
Waldo

>
>I wonder why it isn't obvious what I am talking about:
>See my initial mail regarding this issue:
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>The second problem in the applications is that they let the
>user create whatever nice looking document but they don't
>help the user to care about possible limitations when printing
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>If the applications would help the user to care about printing
>(this is the opposite of "guessing"), no problem would exist.
>
>Isn't it obvious:
>If the user is guided to create a documet which fits for the
>final output device, the final output would fit.
>If the user is not guided to create a documet which fits for
>the final output device, the final output fits only by fluke.
>
>
>Kind Regards
>Johannes Meixner
>--
>SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5      Mail: jsmeix at suse.de
>90409 Nuernberg, Germany                    WWW: http://www.suse.de/




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