[contestms-dev] Printing
- From: Fabian Gundlach <fabian.gundlach@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: contestms-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 16:57:34 -0500
Hi,
what do you think about integrating a printing interface into CMS (i.e.
contestants print by submitting a file to the CWS)?
I think it might be a bit easier to enforce printing policies (each contestant
should print at most x pages in total and each print job should have at most y
pages, contestants should not mess around with the printer settings) and add
some header stating where to deliver the print job. Most of these things could
be implemented once and then be reused at every contest.
I'm not sure how printing has been handled at past IOIs. Did you set up some
kind of "shared virtual printer" in CUPS, that adds the header and forwards to
the real printer?
Direct printer access would only have to be established on the contest server
if we support printing via the web interface.
During recent IOI and ICPC competitions it seems to have become a "tradition"
that printing didn't work as expected at least during the practice session :).
I don't know what the reasons for these issues were, but maybe some of them
could be avoided in the future if we restrict to more "basic" printing via
CWS?
We should at least support printing text files (with automatic source code
formatting) and pdf files. Most usual application printing dialogs can export
to pdf, I guess, so contestants could in principle still print anything they
want.
A fixed user-printer association might be desirable for example in the case
that the contestants are distributed across multiple rooms and there is one
printer in each room.
By the way, a few germany IOI coaches are meeting this weekend to hack on the
contest system. For example we are writing a german importer format. More on
this later...
Best,
Fabian
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