Subject: Re: [PATCH] allow printing via PS generation for gnome port
From: Vlad Harchev (hvv@hippo.ru)
Date: Mon Feb 19 2001 - 10:39:57 CST
On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
Hi Dom,
I hope you won't mind cc'ing this to list.
> Hi Vlad,
>
> The only thing attached to this message was a Russian translation. Could you
> please resend this? I'll look it over.
Oops, I'm sorry. I've resent it as a reply to my message that should contain
that patch.
> Also, I have a question about your other message (re: Symbol fonts & lists)
> and your patch to fix it - would it be better to output the unicode gylphs
> instead of using font indexes? Is this possible? This would allow Symbol
> fonts to work on GnomePrint, IIRC
That's a whole story, IMO. I will call symbols (characters of symbol and
dingbats font) as Symbols from here.
The unicode value for common symbols is >0x1000 (JFYI).
We need to investignate how word and etc store Symbols in the .doc and .rtf
first. They may store correct unicode value (I don't think so - they shouldn't
do this for compatibility reasons) or glyph index (the value < 255). (Dom,
what you can say?).
Here are operations for which it's necessary to use glyph index of Symbols:
* inserting characters via "insert character" dialog
* displaying Symbol to screen (since we don't support unicode on most of our
platforms).
* generating PS (we don't emit encoding vectors, so all we can do is to
emit characters with value equal to glyph index when printing to PS).
* if Symbols are stored as glyphs in .doc and .rtf (at least if some
versions of Word use indexes for Symbols), and for compatibility with
other software that uses glyph indexes for Symbols.
Here are operations for which it's necessary to use correct unicode values
of Symbols:
* printing via gnome-print
* exporting to other formats that use unicode values for Symbols (or if
unicode values of Symbols is used or would be useful when converting
to that format - e.g. Latex)
It looks that the operations for which it's necessary to know unicode values
are not very frequent and not that necessary (IMO). Currently (after my
patch applied) AW will (still) store Symbols as indexes of glyphs and all
operations for which it's necessary to know glyph index will work flawlessly
(proivided patch is applied). As for operations for which unicode value would
be necessary (for gnome print and exporting to other formats)- they (still)
won't work since no code is currently present in AW to support benefits of
representing Symbols as unicode.
When either of approaches for representation of Symbols is used (storing
unicode values of Symbols or their indexes internally) information about other
representation of Symbols would be nice to have (if we aim to perform both
sets of operations). Of course that information (for converting between
representations) better be stored in translation tables - but these tables
will be fontname-dependant - so it would be better to store such tables in
external files similar to u2g - and will require additional code to load them,
maintain and use etc.
As for gnome print:
Currently AW's code that prints via gnome-print doesn't support outputting
characters with unicode values > 255 (since GP accepts only 'char' when
printing IIRC). So this limitation should be removed first (may be there are
functions for outputting wide characters to gnome-print?).
So, having considered all alternatives, I propose to leave current
representation of Symbols at least in 0.7.13 (all the code is already there
and everything works fine). Moving to other representation would require a lot
of additional code, the benefits will be really small (provided translation
tables between different representaions are involved - i.e. provided that
both sets of operations that require both types of representation of Symbols
are have to be implemented).
> Thanks,
> Dom
>
>
> >From: Vlad Harchev <hvv@hippo.ru>
> >To: abiword-dev@abisource.com
> >Subject: [PATCH] allow printing via PS generation for gnome port
> >Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:17:53 +0400 (SAMT)
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Here is a patch to enable direct printing on gnome (printing via gnome
> >print
> >remains available) for yesterday's CVS version.
> > It could be turned off in /src/config/abi_defs.mk by setting
> >ABI_OPT_GNOME_DIRECT_PRINT = 0
> >
> > The added menuitem is called "Print directly". Translations of this
> >menuitem
> >to english and russian included.
> >
> > I really hope that this patch will get included in the 0.7.13 and that
> >direct printing will be enabled by default (let's think about our users).
> >
> > Best regards,
> > -Vlad
> ><< patch-aw >>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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>
Best regards,
-Vlad
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