[open-beos-printing] Re: Updates?

Hi Karsten!

2008/8/11 Julun <HOST.HAIKU@xxxxxx>
>> I have started playing around a bit with some new API for the print kit.
>>
>> BPrinter: wraps currently around the old style printer nodes, but i would 
>> like to extend it to handle ppd informations as well.
>
> Just to be a bit more specific, the ppd parser should no go in here. Only 
> printer settings and some info about ppd file or driver location.

So it just provides a convenience API for the standard printer spooler
settings that are stored in file attributes (printer driver, transport
add-on, ...)?
How do you intend to support printer driver specific settings? For
example the path to the PPD file? Do you provide direct access to
BDirectory of the
spool folder or do you wrap that too?

>> BPrinterRoster: can be used to retrieve printers from the system without 
>> print_server.

What's this for? ATM only printer_server or printers preflet could use
that, right?

>> BPrintPanel, BJobSetupPanel (some missing panels): the idea here is to get 
>> rid of implementing these inside the driver (won't work with cups anyway).
>
> Most likely they would use the ppd parser to get the printer options.

Yepp. It should be extensible by printer drivers. libprint already
provides this to a certain degree, but of course only for libprint
based printer drivers.

>> Instead they should get the information from BPrinter and it set there as 
>> well. This would also allow to get rid of app settings storage in print 
>> server.

I still think coupling the settings with an application is a good
idea, so each application uses the settings it has used the last time
for printing. What's missing however are user definable presets (like
for color or black/white only). These should be configurable in the
printers preflet and in the print setup/job dialogs as well.

> This is not entirely correct. I would offload the burden to the application 
> developer which seems, hmmm...

I think this was intended by Be too. AFAIK Gobe stored these settings
within documents. I choose the app settings storage so neither the
application nor the printer driver has to care about it.

>> I would also like to merge the preview and pdf printer as inbuild classes, 
>> so that, e.g preview printing works instantly without print to preview or 
>> tons of clicks in the printer panels. The same counts for pdf, it should be 
>> provided by default and always be available, but not as independent system 
>> printer.

Good idea, like it is available in Mac OS X? I think a good place
would be the settigs dialog opened by the print server. Where you
could add buttons for "preview" and "save to PDF file" and a
possibility to set PDF specific settings. Are there any PDF printers
available? If that's the case the PDF printer driver would still be
necessary.

BTW these are acutally features for R2, but I don't want to stop you
if you have time to complete it before R1 is released :-)

>> PS: Any informations on the cups port?

Bad news: Jovan wanted to deliver the ppd parser one week ago, but I
have not received it yet...

Good news: CUPS almost builds out of the box under Haiku. Only the
backend drivers need some work (= transport add-ons in Haiku). However
I did not test it. I could provide the Jamfiles if my MacBookPro did
not die last week :-( Of course no backups when needed.

Cheers,
Michael

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