[Development] [Interest] Printer-specific options in Qt5's print dialog (Linux, CUPS)

[Thiago Macieira]

Resending this to the development mailing list.

Others: please read Michael's email below.

On segunda-feira, 30 de janeiro de 2017 14:12:32 PST you wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> in September 2015, I asked about the status of printer-specific options
> in the Qt 5 print dialog on Linux (with CUPS as printing system), s.
> thread at [1].
> 
> As John Layt explained, a rework of the print dialog had started for Qt
> 5 but could not be finished until then. The implementation for
> printer-specific options 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. John explained that unfortunately, work on the new printing
> system could not be continued then due to lack of time and money. As far
> as I can see, the situation now is still mostly the same.
> 
> As printer-specific options (like e.g. selecting a particular input
> tray, setting a PIN for a confidential print job, punching, creating a
> booklet, ...) are quite an important feature for us (City of Munich), we
> are currently evaluating different options for how to continue. One
> option is to implement that functionality ourselves or have a contractor
> implement it for us.
> 
> We would very much like this feature to be available upstream so that
> everybody can benefit from it and we do not have to maintain it in our
> own "fork" of Qt.
> 
> Before we make any further plans, I wanted to ask about the Qt project's
> current plan for the print dialog.
> 
> While I am very grateful for the links John has given about the new
> print system back then, some points are still a bit vague to me and I
> currently do not know what the next concrete steps in the implementation
> of the new print system would be to get closer to the desired goal. (Any
> further information on that is welcome.)
> 
> Back then, John had written that various new features need to be
> implemented for the new Qt print system and a temporary solution based
> on the current code might be a better approach at first. In case no
> activities are currently planned on Qt's side, our current technical
> approach would probably be to implement the feature based on the current
> 
> code base and make an implementation similar to what John wrote in [2]:
> > Given the dependency tree of new features required to reach the end
> > point, a temporary implementation might be a better bet than waiting
> > for the new print system, i.e. reimplement the old extra page but
> > smarter. The main problem with the old page was it duplicated settings
> > from the main dialog, and hid the fact you could actually edit the
> > values. The UX I had in mind for Qt4 was to choose all the features
> > that could be supported directly in the main dialog and add them
> > there, then filter those out in the extra page in a generic editing
> > view. It would require a lot of work around parsing PPD's and matching
> > option codes to existing ui, but it's doable.
> 
> I would be very grateful for any further information on the topic,
> particularly on the following questions:
> 
> 1) Are there (concrete) plans for the next steps considering the Qt
> print dialog?
> 2) Is the Qt project interested in us working together with them to get
> the feature implemented upstream?
> 3) Is a temporary implementation as described above considered as a good
> approach for now?
> 4) Are there other people/organisations that have the same problem? Do
> you have approaches to deal with that?
> 
> Possibly, Qt's development mailing list might be a better place when it
> comes to more details about a a possible implementation, but I wanted to
> start here where the discussion took place in 2015.
> 
> Regards,
> Michael
> 
> PS: Besides the implementation of printer-specific options, there are a
> few other things in the Qt 5 print dialog that we would like to address,
> but that will be done separately.
> 
> 
> [1]
> http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/2015-September/thread.html#18
> 692 [2]
> http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/2015-September/018700.html
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-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center