A rather unusual application of the 'Special Printer' feature in KDEPrint
has been employed by KDE user Paul Evans for quite some time now. After being asked
to write an article about his inventions, he did so, and now finally it has been published on printing.kde.org. Allow yourself to be amazed at the power and flexibility of KPrinter, minus any involvement of dead flattened trees spoiled by
ink or black dust particles...
Comments:
Nice stuff, and a suggestion - a.c. - 2002-05-26
The concept of import/export, files, printers, database are all the same thing. These should not be seperated. An application should use 1 to 3 kio's (file stream, page, && table/sql). The conversion between fileformats should be external to the application. During the open/save dialogs, the applicable choices should be allowed. Likewise, the printer should simply be part of output (it should be a page kio).
This would allow :
1) a clean seperation of import/export from application,
2) new ideas to be easily added in the future (perhaps via a plugin on the open/save dialog)
3) the constant re-use of import/export code. If somebody creates an output of png, and a 2'nd person creates a conversion of png->jpeg, then the application is now able to save in jpeg. Likewise, if app does a page kio of PS, and somebody follows up with PS->tiff, then a nice fax interface is easier. Or perhaps PS->mng, etc.
Finally, the Location menu should be easily configurable with shortcuts to these. Allow a user to add what they want. I don't believe in paper, so I have no need for a printer. But I would love to send the data directly to kmail or kopete to send a file directly to someone.
Re: Nice stuff, and a suggestion - Carbon - 2002-05-26
Did you by chance get confused on your way to kde-devel? :-)
Re: Nice stuff, and a suggestion - a.c. - 2002-05-27
No, only lost in time. This is simply one area that i will write some code for shortly, if I have time.
But If I don't have time, I am simply hoping that others will think about it or do it.
Whoa! - Janne - 2002-05-27
That is indeed impressive stuff :)!