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Till Kamppeter | 3 Jun 2008 16:47
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The Common Printing Dialog and PDF as standard print job format for GTK/GNOME applications

Hi,

at OpenPrinting [0] we have developed several new technologies for
making printing more reliable and much easier for the user. Currently,
we have 5 Google Summer of Code students and so we get a lot of our
ideas implemented. Two of our projects need changes in graphical
applications and/or the GUI toolkit libraries, as for example GTK. One 
is the Common Printing Dialog and the other is the use of PDF as the
standard print job format. Both features have found a wide acceptance on
the Printing Summits [10] and implementation has started now. especially
with a lot of support from the printer manufactures for the PDF printing
workflow.

Common Printing Dialog
----------------------

As most of you already know, OpenPrinting and OpenUsability have
developed a Common Printing Dialog for all desktops and applications
[1], [2], [3]. Ubuntu blueprint at [9]. This should make printing much
easier as if they get used how to print with application A they
immediately know how to print from application B. It will also get
assured that there is always access to all functionality of the printer
(driver) and the printing system, requiring no effort from application
developers. We would like to have the support from GTK and GNOME to make
applications interfacing to the new dialog by a plug-in interface. This
will not only allow to use our dialog as the common one but also any
other one, as the ones from Qt or GTK for example.

The interface is designed and implemented by Lars Uebernickel, one of
the Google Summer of Code students [7]. The specs for this interface are
(Continue reading)

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Ghee Teo | 3 Jun 2008 17:27
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Re: The Common Printing Dialog and PDF as standard print job format for GTK/GNOME applications

Hi Till,

Thanks for raising this here. In reference [6] you mentioned, the 
committee suggested to transfer the
print dialog out of the toolkit (in this context, it is GTK+) and you 
also mentioned access to the new
dialog by plug-in interface, can you elaborate on this?
How can an application passes its data between the dialog and vice 
versa? Since setting on the dialog
has implication on how the application to render the pages and also 
interaction to the print system.
This we need to think also in the context that GTK+ is cross-platform, 
not only on Linux/OpenSolaris
and also Windows.

I would like to help out to see a newer rev of Print Dialog base on 
Peter Sikking's design be available on
GNOME, the work does seems to be non-trivial not only on the GUI 
elements, but also in API abstraction
if we are to continue to use the current GTK+ front-end and back-end 
print systems approach.
Would some GTK+ hackers have comments on this?

-Ghee
P.S. Would you or any of the GSOC going to GAUDEC 2008 in Istabul in 
July 7th-12th?
I have a BOF on 
http://guadec.expectnation.com/guadec08/public/schedule/detail/15
We could have more discussion after that in Print Dialog :)
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peter sikking | 3 Jun 2008 18:33
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Re: The Common Printing Dialog and PDF as standard print job format for GTK/GNOME applications

Ghee wrote:

> P.S. Would you or any of the GSOC going to GAUDEC 2008 in Istabul in  
> July 7th-12th?
> I have a BOF on http://guadec.expectnation.com/guadec08/public/schedule/detail/15
> We could have more discussion after that in Print Dialog :)

I will be a the guadec on the 10-12th, and present about the dialog
on the 10th.

     --ps

         founder + principal interaction architect
             man + machine interface works

         http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture
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Avishay Orpaz | 22 Jun 2008 13:05
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Detecting MP3 player volumes


Hello everyone,
I'm writing a small program in which I have to detect all the volumes of an MP3 player connected to my computer
(in my case it's a Sansa C250, which mounts two separate volumes). I tried using the volume monitor, and
indeed it returns me a list of all mounted volumes, but looking at their type - most of them have a hard disk
type, even the player and USB memories. On the other hand, the icon show on the desktop for each kind of
storage device is different - the player volumes are shown with a player icon, and the USB volumes are shown
with USB icon. I would like to know how can I tell the difference between the volume types.

Thanks in advance,
Avishay
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Alexander Jones | 22 Jun 2008 13:46

Re: Detecting MP3 player volumes


Hi

This is a HAL question, but here's my answer nevertheless: check for
the "capabilities" property. If it's an audio player, it should
contain "audio_player" or something.
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Gmane