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

[Gary C Martin]

On 19 Mar 2009, at 20:34, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:

> Wade Brainerd wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
>> <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> Eben Eliason wrote:
>>>> I have to agree that a print to pdf function could be useful,  
>>>> though,
>>>> especially since it means that every activity can create output  
>>>> that
>>>> can be transferred elsewhere (via email, USB drive, etc.) for
>>>> printing.  This provides a method, albeit indirect, for G1G1  
>>>> users to
>>>> print from various activities whose file formats are only  
>>>> understood
>>>> by a Sugar activity.
>>> No, it doesn't.  What we are discussing here is building PDF  
>>> conversion
>>> functionality directly into Glucose.  That means that the PDF  
>>> renderer
>>> will support a fixed set of common file formats, corresponding to  
>>> the
>>> output of a few popular Activities.  At the moment, I am not aware  
>>> of any
>>> Activity that produces printable data in a nonstandard format.   
>>> Write
>>> produces Open Document Text.  Record produces JPEG.  Paint  
>>> produces PNG.
>>> Therefore, these are the formats that the PDF renderer will support.
>>
>> Um, last time I checked there were a few more activities than these
>> which might benefit from printing.
>
> I was not aware of any existing Activity which saves printable  
> images or
> documents to the Journal in a format that is not commonly used  
> outside of
> Sugar.  Since you protested I looked through the source code of  
> Colors!,
> and sure enough, it seems to save Journal objects in its own special  
> DRW
> format.
>
> Even so, it will not be easy to print from Colors!.  What we have
> described so far is a non-interactive, fixed set of conversions to  
> PDF,
> included with Glucose.  To support DRW, we would have to include a
> complete duplicate copy of Colors!'s rendering engine with Sugar...  
> and
> that will only work as long as Colors! doesn't change its output  
> format.
>
> In order to permit printing from applications that don't save in any
> common format, we would have to create a much more complicated  
> system, in
> which Activities somehow participate actively in the print conversion
> process.  I'm not necessarily opposed to such a system, but it's a  
> much
> larger undertaking than simply blessing a few common formats.  It  
> would
> probably be easier to add PNG export to Colors!.

Re PNG support in Colors!, yea I was looking for that a while back :-)  
in the end I took a screen grab and cropped. Just added feature  
request ticket:

	http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/577

Regards,
-Gary

> --Ben
>
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