[KLUG Members] Printing and Linux

[Chester Wisniewski]

Komal wrote:

>Hello,
>
>Before anyone brings up the topic, this has nothing to do with vendors
>not releasing their specs.  This is purely a usability issue, it
>should
>work well even if you're just printing to a file, but it doesn't.
>
>We're at a stage where handing a job over to the print spooler (cups
>for
>example) shows it up in the print queue.  This is no different from 15
>years ago, except that we now have a nice gui to show us the print
>queue.
>
>What also sucks is that you need root (or sudo) privs to change the
>printer configuration for a single print.  If a printer is configured
>to
>print double sided on A4 size paper in medium quality colour, no user
>can change that.  My dad needed to print on legal paper, and I had to
>ssh in and change the configuration.  My solution to this was to allow
>all users to edit the cups configuration without needing a password.
>This also is not great, because, my dad changing the settings from
>OpenOffice should not affect my sister who wants to print from firefox
>from her own login.
>
>What does not happen:
>- Spooler does not pop up an alert on error
>- Printing to a remote printer gives you no feedback whatsoever
>- Per session configuration by a user
>- Common dialog for selecting printers from applications
>
>The first should be easy enough to fix, and it would be cool if
>someone
>from this list could do that.  The second, is not hard (hey, windows
>does it, so it can't be hard), and is a good choice for an engineering
>project if 2 or 3 guys want to try it.  You need to look at the IPP
>protocol.
>
>The third requirement seems easy with CUPS as it provides job options
>where you can override settings in the PPD file, however, using this
>might tie an application to CUPS.
>
>The fourth requirement could be very useful for applications built on
>Gnome, for example.  We already have common dialogs for file handling,
>colour handling and font handling.  Printer handling is missing.
>Using
>the CUPS API, it should be fairly easy to develop.  Hmm, maybe someone
>should check if this already exists.  What I'm looking for is not a
>gui
>to manipulate printer options, but a dialog box that can be included
>in
>an application, which will provide options to select a printer,
>orientation, and other properties, and actually pass the data along
>with
>these options to CUPS.
>
>Any takers?
>
>Regards,
>
>Komal
>
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>  
>
Komal, I don't say much on the list, and occasionally you should google 
for an answer rather than post here, but your English has come a long 
way and you are contributing a lot more to the list lately. Nice job.

Chet