[Gnome-print] request for additional functions

[David Cooke <d j cooke lineone net>]

Hi,

I'm porting a program from MS Windows to Linux/Gnome, aiming to reproduce 
the same functionality and interface. It took a little hacking to get the 
printing interface the same, and I just got it all working yesterday 
afternoon, a few hours before the announcement of v0.35, which has messed 
things up a bit.

I'd like to register a plea for greater generosity in the functions made 
available to developers, in the interests of flexibility, providing 
whatever developers might need, rather than only what they certainly 
will.  I need to be able to display printing settings in a custom dialog 
box, and to initialize a GnomePrinterWidget with those settings when 
necessary.  I find it extraordinary that this facility is apparently not 
provided, especially since it takes only a little hacking (or it did under 
v0.34).

I need functions gnome_printer_profile_duplicate..  and 
gnome_printer_profile_free..., which are trivial (the latter already 
available but defined "static" and missing a g_return_if_fail...), and 
gnome_printer_widget_set_profile..., and I also need access to the 
GnomePrinterWidget in a GnomePrintDialog.  A function 
gnome_printer_widget_set_profile... could be neatly done and worked, as I 
recollect, perfectly under 0.34.  Under 0.34, the profile could be set from 
the profiles list in GnomePrinterWidget.  Access to the profiles is lost in 
0.35, and for me to initialize from an external profile raises the question 
as to whether or not the memory (which I have allocated) will be freed by 
gnome-print when the dialog closes.  Certainly I've had crashes when 
freeing the memory myself.  Furthermore, under 0.34, I think the 
GnomePrinterWidget was all correctly initialized, but under 0.35, only the 
option_menu is initialized, not the entries, radiobuttons etc.  I haven't 
yet had time to sort out whether these two problems can be overcome, I 
expect I will just revert to 0.34.

Currently, to implement the above, I need myself to define structures 
GnomePrinterProfile, GnomePrinterWidget and GnomePrintDialog.

I should be glad to see a version 0.36 which provides the facilities I need 
without hacking!  I would ask whether it would not be sensible to restore 
the profiles to GnomePrinterWidget, and to use ...duplicate and ..free 
functions to store the lastprofile variable.  I notice also there are a 
couple of lines left in gnome_print_dialog.c  to the effect:

#ifdef  0
                   ...gpw->profiles.....

but profiles is no longer a member of structure GnomePrinterWidget, unless 
this is a special case.  I am sending this from Windows, so do not at the 
moment have access to the code.

Regards,
and with appreciation of the efforts of the gnome-print team, 
notwithstanding certain frustrations,

David J. Cooke