Re: [gnome-print] printing a ps or eps file

[Chema Celorio <chema ximian com>]

On Tue, 2002-04-30 at 17:40, Trever L. Adams wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-04-30 at 17:07, Chema Celorio wrote:
> > On Wed, 2002-04-03 at 10:24, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> > > My app generates graphs in postscript or EPS.  I'd like to offer the
> > > user the chance to print these files via gnome-print, but I'm not sure
> > > how to use gnome-print when the material to print is already in
> > > postscript form.  Any help appreciated.
> > 
> > This is not currently supported and i don't think it will be in the sort
> > term. It requires a lot of code on our side for a not so important
> > feature. Even if somebody wrote the code i think we will not add it into
> > gnome-print, it isn't trivial.
> 
> Obviously, I am not providing code at the moment. Though, I could send
> someone my libfax or they can look at the sendfax scripts (which is
> where I got mine) on how to use gv to convert to an image.  Then
> gnome-print could just print the image.

Gnome-print powered apps can use the gnome-print API to print to a
number of different backends, I don't feel that we should support
functionality for an app that is going to generate PS directly. The app
can generate the output with gnome_print calls, which is really very
similar to Postscript.

if you want to do :

100 100 translate
72 72 moveto 
72 220 lineto
showpage

in gnome_print you would do:

gnome_print_beginpage (pc);
gnome_print_translate (pc, 100, 100);
gnome_print_moveto (pc, 72, 72);
gnome_print_lineto (pc. 72, 220);
gnome_print_showpage (pc);

So there is very little reason for an app that wants to use gnome-print
to emit PS code directly.

> app -> gnome-print -> ghostscript -> jpeg -> gnome-print -> "printer"
> 
> Not sure it is that much code.  The only problem is the dpi of the
> printer, etc.  Do you always convert image to 300? 600? 1200?  Is there
> a way the gnome-print knows the dpi so ghostscript can do the right
> conversion?

Yes, but what would we win from this?

regards,
Chema