[Sugar-devel] Print Support proposal (need input) Beta

[Tomeu Vizoso]

2009/3/19 Carol Farlow Lerche <cafl at msbit.com>:
> That is exactly what my "turn it in" queue is, but I'm sure there may be
> other ways to implement it ... email to the teacher with an attachment, etc,
> etc.

I heard proposed last time we discussed printing that activities would
be able to print to pdf and the school server could accept pdf uploads
for printing.

Regards,

Tomeu

> On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Wade Brainerd <wadetb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 2009/3/19 Carol Farlow Lerche <cafl at msbit.com>:
>> > A problem with the desktop-oriented printer support in Unix and in
>> > Windows
>> > is that it has the underlying assumption that the person at the desktop
>> > should be in unfettered control of the ability to print (with lip
>> > service
>> > paid to an overall page quota).  Where this breaks down for children is
>> > that
>> >
>> > . kids love tangible output, so unless someone does something about it,
>> > they
>> > will print everything.
>> >
>> > . in a school the printer may be somewhere else than in the classroom,
>> > and
>> > kids aren't allowed to roam the building picking up their output.  So
>> > even
>> > more than printer users in an office environment, they have no clue as
>> > to
>> > why things don't show up as "printed", or why the print queue is long.
>> > (Could be a printer jam.  Could be a graphics-intensive prior job, or
>> > their
>> > own job being graphics-intensive, could be an unwitting print of a 30
>> > page
>> > job on a slow printer, etc., etc.) Just as in the "hit the launch button
>> > again" phenomenon when activity launching is slow on the XO, this leads
>> > to
>> > printing the same document again and again.
>> >
>> > I'd like to show you the scars from the arrows in my back after spending
>> > a
>> > day a week in elementary school classrooms over a period of several
>> > years,
>> > but it would scare the children.
>> >
>> > So here is a scenario that I think would be better, especially in an
>> > environment such as a third world school with few printers and scarcity
>> > of
>> > paper/toner/ink.
>> >
>> > Vamsi's default pdf printer is great...no consumables, no remote print
>> > server, nice way to preserve the visual effect of a piece of work for
>> > posterity.
>> >
>> > But for printing real output, I think a more draconian control system is
>> > needed.  One possibility:  submit pdf files to a Moodle-mediated "turn
>> > it
>> > in" queue.  This ensures that an artifact has been produced that the
>> > child
>> > can review and is motivated to review before giving it to the teacher to
>> > decide if it warrants printing.  The teacher can then browse the turned
>> > in
>> > work, printing those examples s/he thinks warrant the expense.
>> >
>> > Should it be possible to configure a normal CUPS printer queue where
>> > kids
>> > could "just print it"?  Yes, there are probably circumstances where this
>> > is
>> > appropriate.  But even where kids make the decision about what to print,
>> > I
>> > think having some kind of per-document filter, such as "has this
>> > document
>> > already been printed in the last n hours?", "is this document longer
>> > than x
>> > pages?", "has this child submitted more than y pages in the last time
>> > period" is crucial.  And so it would be good to build that into the
>> > journal
>> > print interface.  I don't think the ordinary unix print quota mechanism
>> > does
>> > this, but I admit I haven't looked at it in detail recently.
>>
>> I wonder if "printer control" could be managed in a social way rather
>> than a technical one?  Say, if a child wants something printed, they
>> use Journal File Transfer to send it to their teacher, who prints it
>> for them if they deem it appropriate.
>>
>> -Wade
>
>
>
> --
> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
> depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
>
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