Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (464 mails)

[Johannes Meixner <jsmeix@xxxxxxx>]

Hello,

On Feb 5 22:30 Sid Boyce wrote (shortened):
> Klaus Singvogel wrote:
> > Sid Boyce wrote:
> > > Any chance of including in 11.0? It would be much better and more
> > > up-to-date to be able to print to pdf rather than ps which is becoming a
> > > rarity.
> >
> > Why that?
> > Which advantage of the cups-pdf backend do you expect?
>
> To be able to get a .pdf file output from firefox instead of .ps.

User applications (including user print dialog programs like "kprinter")
run on the user's local machine as a user's process under the user's ID
(i.e. they run in the user's personal environment).
Therefore applications can store files (e.g. PDFs) in the user's home
directory (or wherever the user has specified in the application).

On the other hand the processes of the printing system do not run
under the user's ID and in case of printing in the network they
even run on an arbitrary different machine in the network.

Therefore the printing system cannot store files in whatever place
which was specified by a user who has submitted a print job.

Of course you can use some of the hacks for single-user
stand-alone systems to "print" whatever output format you like
into a static file but obviously static file locations cannot
work in a multi-tasking multi-user networked system and therefore
we cannot provide out-of-the-box support for such evil hacks.

Also "print to ps file" is done by the user application itself.
No printing system is involved when the user application
does not send its printing output to a print queue
but instead stores it into whatever file the user likes.

If you like "print to PDF file" in whatever user application,
file seperated enhancement requests for each of those applications.

For KDE and/or Gnome only two such enhancement requests should be enough
because all KDE and/or Gnome applications should use the same KDE and/or
Gnome printing engine so that it should be sufficient to implement a
"print to PDF file" function in the KDE and/or Gnome printing engines.

I don't know if any KDE application print dialog offers a
"print to PDF file" or if this can be only done via "kprinter".


Rgegarding "print to PS/PDF" and "PS/PDF printer"
versus "save as PS/PDF":

Only the latter is the correct wording for what actually happens.
Also "print as PS file" is misleading because what actually
happens is "save as PS".

I think the reason for the confusion with the wording is that
the "save as PS" functionality is often not found in the "file" menue.
Instead in the "print" menue a "print to file" option can be found
and fortunately this results a PostScript file so that for the user
it looks as if printing is done when he likes to do "save as PS".

If it would have been "save as PS" under the "file" menue,
nobody would ask if CUPS could somehow provide a "save as PDF"
option in the application programs.

An example how it can be implemented correctly is the "xv" program.
Here it is the "save" menue where one can select "PostScript"
among various other types and there is no "print to file"
option for the "print" functionality.

Some time ago I checked OpenOffice:
There is no "save as PS" option under the "file" menue
but one can print into a file via the "print" menue.

Strictly speaking "save as PS" and "print to file" are not the
same regarding the result.
Only "save as PS" guarantees that the result is a PostScript file.
In contrast "print to file" can result whatever arbitrary
printer-specific (binary) data which the application produces
to be sent as print job (e.g. Gimp can produce arbitrary
printer-specific data).

Only by chance (more precisely because PS is the usual data format
when Unix/Linux applications produce data for print jobs)
it happens that "print to file" can be misused when there
is no "save as PS" functionality in the application.
But even this is no guarantee that such a PostScript file
would print on any printer because it can be printer-specific
PostScript.
E.g. OpenOffice is known to produce printer-specific PostScript
so that such a PostScript file may only print on the printer
for which OpenOffice has made it.


As far as I understand what you actually request is:

- A "save as PS" option
  which results printer-independent PostScript.

- A "save as PDF" option
  which results a portable, archivable, and printable PDF file
  i.e. PDF/A (for archiving) or even better PDF/X (for printing)
  which are both subsets of PDF leaving out PDF features not suited
  for reliable archiving and printing respectively.


Again:
This has nothing to do with the printing system.
It belongs only to the application programs.


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany
AG Nuernberg, HRB 16746, GF: Markus Rex
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx