[Development] Fwd: Google Summer of Code 2017 - Common Print Dialog project

Fri Feb 3 09:57:20 CET 2017

[below: my answer to Till's initial email regarding the Common Print Dialog]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code 2017 - Common Print Dialog project
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2017 00:04:03 +0100
From: Michael Weghorn <m.weghorn at posteo.de>
To: Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter at gmail.com>
CC: [...]

Hi Till,

thank you very much for your email.

in general, I very much like the idea of such a Common Print Dialog
(CPD). I think it would really improve user experience a lot. The many
different print dialogs are confusing for the users. In my opinion, the
CPD would be a huge improvement from a developer/maintenance point of
view as well.

Because I liked the idea of a Common Print Dialog a lot, I also asked
about the status of the project (that had been there) in March last year
on OpenPrinting's printing-architecture mailing list [1] where you also
participated in the discussion.

The replies there made me understand that the project had been
paused/cancelled and as far as I understand, one of the main reasons was
that there was no huge interest on Gtk's and Qt's side to actually
integrate support for the CPD back then for different reasons.

While I do still very much like the idea of a CPD, I cannot estimate
whether the situation and chances for the CPD have fundamentally changed
since then and the new approach has better chances. Maybe you can
estimate that better than I can.

I think it would be very important to work together with the Qt and Gtk
projects from the start and to make sure that there is actually interest
in supporting/integrating the CPD in both projects, as that seems to be
crucial to me for the success of the project.

Maybe it would also be good to evaluate whether it makes sense to work
together with LibreOffice from the start as well. LibreOffice also
works/worked on a redesign of its print dialog, s. concept at [2]. This
is also mentioned as a potential GSOC project in LibreOffice's wiki [3].

> Would you like to cooperate with us? Forward this message to Qt
upstream devs? Do mentoring on the Qt side?

I would be happy to help in case I can. However, I do not think I would
be the right person to do mentoring on the Qt side as I have not been
involved in the project itself so far and have also just started
contacting the project regarding the print dialog.

I think it might be good to address that topic on Qt's development
mailing list. As far as I understand Andy Shaw's reply to my email
there, the Qt project currently does not seem to be working toward a
particular vision on the future direction of its print dialog right now
and this might be a good situation to discuss different alternatives,
including support for the CPD. The first message on the mentioned thread
is [4], which was the forwarding of an email I had first written to the
qt-interest mailing list.

Feel free to forward our conversation there as well in case you consider
that useful.

> P. S.: Link [4] is missing in your mail.

Thank you for that note. I currently cannot think of any totally
different resource I wanted to mention; possibly I wanted to refer to
the thread where the discussion started in 2015, which is [5] and is
also mentioned in the new thread.

I would be grateful to hear when more details about the CPD and the next
steps are known. I am already subscribed to OpenPrinting's
"printing-architecture" mailing list. Are there any other resources I
should regularly have a look at to stay informed?

Regards,
Michael

[1]
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/printing-architecture/2016/thread.html#3282
[2] http://pad.documentfoundation.org/p/UX-PrintDialog
[3]
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GSoC/Ideas#Revamp_print_dialog
[4]
http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2017-January/028597.html
[5]
http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/2015-September/thread.html#18692

On 2017-02-01 12:53, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> I am also organizing the Google Summer of Code participation of the
> Linux Foundation and especially of OpenPrinting.
>
> The most important project we want to do this summer is a Common Print
> Dialog, meaning that there is one print dialog design for all desktops
> and all applications.
>
> The dialog should be provided by the user's desktop, so it is needed in
> versions of the common UI toolkits, GTK and Qt. For applications not
> needing to link to both Qt and GTK for that the applications should
> communicate via D-Bus with the desktop's dialog. This way the user has
> always the same print dialog with the same UX and the same printers
> listed, independent which applications he uses and which tooolkit the
> applications use.
>
> See our project idea here (first item):
>
>
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/gsoc/google-summer-code-2017-openprinting-projects
>
>
> This could also solve the problem of Qt missing a decent print dialog.
>
> We are currently recruiting students and also hope to find some working
> on Qt (dialog implementation and D-Bus bridge addition to Qt).
>
> WDYT?
>
> Would you like to cooperate with us? Forward this message to Qt upstream
> devs? Do mentoring on the Qt side?
>
>    Till
>
> P. S.: Link [4] is missing in your mail.
>
> On 01/31/2017 06:21 AM, Michael Weghorn wrote:
>> Background: The Qt 4 print dialog handled printer-specific options using
>> the PPD API but the implementation had been rather broken in Qt 4 and
>> was removed for Qt 5, with the plan to reimplement them as part of a new
>> printing system. However, work on the new printing system could not be
>> continued due to lack of time and money. Currently, printer-specific
>> options are not available in the Qt 5 print dialog (apart from duplex
>> and color mode). We are currently considering to implement support for
>> printer-specific options in Qt 5 and would like to do it "right", i.e.
>> avoiding deprecated APIs and doing it in a way that is supported in the
>> future as well. (More information on the discussion for the Qt print
>> dialog can be found on Qt's mailing lists. [2], [3], [4])
>>
>> Regards,
>> Michael
>>
>>
>> [1] https://www.cups.org/doc/api-ppd.html
>> [2]
>> http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/2017-January/025970.html
>> [3]
>>
http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2017-January/028597.html
>>
>