Re: GNOME Printing

[Jerry Haltom <wasabi larvalstage net>]

> The way things are typically set up now, a job is submitted to the local
> cupsd, which immediately forwards it on to the remote server via IPP. 
> Our D-BUS patch for cupsd has it send back the remote jobid, which
> causes eggcups to begin polling that job on the remote printer.
> 
> Local jobs are treated basically the same as remote jobs are.

One of the problems I've noticed with Cups specifically is that it makes a
distinction at all between local and remote queues. Users do not
understand this, as there is only one actual physical printer (except in
REALLY BIG cases).

Perhaps it would be appropriate for the code to pull the local printer,
and recognize that it is in fact a local queue to a remote printer, and
then pull the remote printer, and aggregate all the jobs.

It's important that users can see OTHER USER'S jobs as well. This is
fundamental in every other printing subsystem (Windows and Mac OS).
Administrators have the ability to see and cancel and manage other user's
jobs, etc.

Users also do not recognize jobs by job ID in anyway (well, mine don't).
They see the Job's subject tag (application specific). So, does it matter
if you submit to local queue, poll local queue and poll remote queue for
jobs belonging to the specific user, and keep polling it, until that user
has no more jobs, at which point the notification icon is removed and
polling stops. Does knowing which local job id corresponds to which remote
job id really even matter?

Pulling up a list of a user's job history should be, in the case of a pure
local printer, only polling the local printer, and in the case of a remote
printer, only polling the remote printer (after all, eventually all local
jobs will become remote jobs in this case).


The end result of all of this would only be to see the notification icon
if he has jobs in the queues, and he would be able to see all his job
history in the same UI (he could even poll up that history from cups, in
.ps or whatever format, which is something other OS's do not offer yet!)