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2007-10-13
, 04:40
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Posts: 3,096 |
Thanked: 1,525 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
@ Michigan, USA
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#2
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Originally Posted by BruceL
I for one welcome the ideas... I am working on KDE refresh fixing printing support and maybe a few other goodies. inside KDE I can print pictures, pdfs, webpages, printing from kedit, kwrite, kate works great. Still looking for a good email app, sylpheed is not printing for me yet. It would be nice to have this support in hildon also. I asked GNUITE about MaemoMapper but he did not seem to enthused.
Now that, thanks to Penguinbait, we can print from the IT, I've put some mind-share into how to make it more mainstream.
The "windows" like solution is, of course, to add a print menu item to lots of applications. Here are the ones I would elect:
* The web-browser shell
* Xournal
* We need a newer Abiword (Though Abiword 2.2.7 does print ok)
* Gnumeric
* Email clients
* RSS Clients
* Evince
* SciTe Text Editor
* The GPE PIM suite
* Maemo Mapper
* Grisbi
* Faint and image viewer
* Notecase
See a problem here? That is a lot of work and I bet your list is different than mine.
The thing is, CUPS already has the functionality to support many of these things from the command line. I wonder if there is a more 'Linux' like approach that is an intermediate solution between waiting for all those updates and using the command line.
Any ideas?
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2007-10-13
, 05:08
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Posts: 1,878 |
Thanked: 646 times |
Joined on Sep 2007
@ San Jose, CA
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#3
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I think it would make the most sense to take the same approach hildon uses for bookmarks and contacts:
A) use an internally consistent format for data representation for passing from client applications ("Web", "E-mail", etc.) to a manager application ("Bookmarks", "Contacts", etc.).
B) have a manager application that does the data specific work for the given task ("Bookmarks", "Contacts", etc.).
So, my suggestion would be:
1) make it so that all applications can save to pdf
2) have a program which takes any random pdf and can print it to appropriate printing devices. It should also be able to print sub-regions of documents. This functionality could simply be added to "PDF reader", and simply give that application 2 names ("PDF Reader" and "Printer").
3) for legacy applications, have a document converter that converts from various known maemo application formats to pdf.
That way, you don't have to have printing logic in every application, just "save" logic (which they probably have already). And, it obeys the conventions already in place with Hildon*.
If you really wanted applications to have a "print" menu item, it would simply be a shortcut for "make the current document into a PDF and send it to the Printer application", which would then double as giving you a print preview when the Printer/PDF viewer application loads.
(* it also obeys Unix conventions of having programs specialize in a given task, and then you have other applications make use of that functionality via standard interfaces, such as the pipeline or things like that. This is done instead of the incredibly poor design of having each application duplicate common functionality, like sorting, grepping, search and replace (sed), or, say, printing.)
A) use an internally consistent format for data representation for passing from client applications ("Web", "E-mail", etc.) to a manager application ("Bookmarks", "Contacts", etc.).
B) have a manager application that does the data specific work for the given task ("Bookmarks", "Contacts", etc.).
So, my suggestion would be:
1) make it so that all applications can save to pdf
2) have a program which takes any random pdf and can print it to appropriate printing devices. It should also be able to print sub-regions of documents. This functionality could simply be added to "PDF reader", and simply give that application 2 names ("PDF Reader" and "Printer").
3) for legacy applications, have a document converter that converts from various known maemo application formats to pdf.
That way, you don't have to have printing logic in every application, just "save" logic (which they probably have already). And, it obeys the conventions already in place with Hildon*.
If you really wanted applications to have a "print" menu item, it would simply be a shortcut for "make the current document into a PDF and send it to the Printer application", which would then double as giving you a print preview when the Printer/PDF viewer application loads.
(* it also obeys Unix conventions of having programs specialize in a given task, and then you have other applications make use of that functionality via standard interfaces, such as the pipeline or things like that. This is done instead of the incredibly poor design of having each application duplicate common functionality, like sorting, grepping, search and replace (sed), or, say, printing.)
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2007-10-13
, 09:05
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Posts: 305 |
Thanked: 154 times |
Joined on Aug 2006
@ Colorado
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#4
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So, my suggestion would be:
1) make it so that all applications can save to pdf
2) have a program which takes any random pdf and can print it to appropriate printing devices. It should also be able to print sub-regions of documents. This functionality could simply be added to "PDF reader", and simply give that application 2 names ("PDF Reader" and "Printer").
3) for legacy applications, have a document converter that converts from various known maemo application formats to pdf.
All that is needed is a way to map 'saved' data to a cups supported mime type, and to make it easy to do from an app.
BL
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2007-10-13
, 13:40
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Posts: 2,142 |
Thanked: 2,054 times |
Joined on Dec 2006
@ Sicily
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#5
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"Cups supports printing a number of formats, including pdf. It apparently goes by mime type. It may even be able to natively print html; I haven't tried it. I'm very happy with the way it prints pdfs."
EDIT couldn't think it was that easy:
Code:
lpr filename.pdf
Several things on this issue are explained in http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-dvi-filter.html
Last edited by debernardis; 2007-10-13 at 14:26.
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2007-10-14
, 00:17
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Posts: 3,096 |
Thanked: 1,525 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
@ Michigan, USA
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#6
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Originally Posted by debernardis
How do you print pdf's or other file types? Can you explain please? Thanks, I am very interested.
EDIT couldn't think it was that easy:but no joy with html (the source is printed instead).Code:lpr filename.pdf
Several things on this issue are explained in http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...vi-filter.html
Printing from KDE will be working soon, I am already printing web pages from Konqurer or however you spell it.
The "windows" like solution is, of course, to add a print menu item to lots of applications. Here are the ones I would elect:
* The web-browser shell
* Xournal
* We need a newer Abiword (Though Abiword 2.2.7 does print ok)
* Gnumeric
* Email clients
* RSS Clients
* Evince
* SciTe Text Editor
* The GPE PIM suite
* Maemo Mapper
* Grisbi
* Faint and image viewer
* Notecase
See a problem here? That is a lot of work and I bet your list is different than mine.
The thing is, CUPS already has the functionality to support many of these things from the command line. I wonder if there is a more 'Linux' like approach that is an intermediate solution between waiting for all those updates and using the command line.
Any ideas?