Subject: Re: Printing on UN*X
sterwill@abisource.com
Date: Fri Feb 04 2000 - 11:36:25 CST
Hubert Figuiere wrote:
> Something that I find worth to point out for AbiWord development:
>
> http://opensource.corel.com/printlib.html
>
> This is a library to handle printing in a better way on GNU/Linux (and
> probably other UNIXes).
>
> That would be nice to support this in the future as a word processor is
> really printing intensive.
This library looks like it takes a different, lower-level approach
to printing. Instead of printing PostScript, it tries to talk directly
to printer devices, and does its own queueing. It even looks like it
manages your printer setup for a given host. I don't quite understand
the entire structure of the APSL yet, but it seems to be compatible
with the many existing components of Unix printing (according to
the picture at http://opensource.corel.com/APSOverview.html).
I'm hesitant to adopt this architecture as AbiWord's only Unix printing
mechanism, just because PostScript (straight to file or piped through
lpr) is still a very desired format in large networked environments with
high-quality printers where lp/lpr/lprng handles dozens or hundreds of
hosts. But I'm sure there are users out there who don't have a PostScript
printer and would like to have this sort of integration with other
applications using this library.
Because of the way AbiWord is written, it should be quite easy to implement
a graphics context for this library (ala PostScript, or GTK, or Win32,
or BeOS, etc.). Keeping the user-interface sane is a different challenge.
Perhaps we could add a user preferences option, a mutually exclusive pair
like: "[X] Print to PostScript printing device ; [ ] Print to
Application Print Services Library (APSL) device".
Like I said, I'm kind of unclear on the ultimate responsibility of the
APSL stuff. It looks like it wants to have a "common format" (it
says PostScript in the picture). If we already speak this, it seems like
all we need to do is pipe it straight to the library. For total integration,
AbiWord should take advantage of the other print management services this
library offers (like queue control, selecting printer options, etc.) from
within AbiWord (perhaps in a few more dialogs).
Any opinions?
-- Shaw Terwilliger
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