[Usability] Re: [Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME

[Till Kamppeter <till kamppeter gmx net>]

Mike Shaver wrote:
> On 12-Dec-05, at 8:33 PM, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> 
>> And we all were of the opinion that
>> the GNOME printing dialog (and also the printing dialogs of Firefox  and
>> Thunderbird) needs improvement.
> 
> 
> Before Firefox 1.0, there was much kerfuffle over this, and out of  that
> came a pledge from someone in the GNOME camp to separate the 
> gnome-print dialog system from the gnome-print "you must render  through
> this" system, such that the dialog could be used on GNOME  desktops.  I
> don't think it ever materialized, though I can't be  bothered to look
> for the bug now.  After the amount of crap I took  for pushing to get
> the GNOME file dialog in -- and I mean that it was  the single biggest
> usability complaint from our Linux user community  by several orders of
> magnitude -- I was in no real rush to go that  route again.  I remain
> unrushed, but if people want to do the work  (including the user-testing
> work, keeping in mind that we actually  care about GNOME installations
> that are more than a year old, etc.)  then there's probably time to get
> it changed in Firefox 2 if the  patch is good enough.
> 
> (The KDE people are much less vitriolic about how Firefox is wearing 
> white after Labour Day on their desktop, for whatever reason, and 
> nobody has bothered to even wire up the file dialog, except for one 
> frustrated hacker who used GNOME.)
> 
> Of course, we support more than just Linux in the Unix-printing  world,
> but if the time has come for an XP_LINUX that differs from  XP_UNIX, or
> even XP_LINUX_GNOME, then I'd be willing to hear a pitch  for it.
> 
>> Today I talked with Frederic Crozat, GNOME packager/maintainer and
>> desktop developer here at Mandriva, and David Barth, vice president  for
>> engineering, about the development of the printing dialogs in GNOME,
>> Firefox, and Thunderbird.
> 
> 
> I *humbly* submit that that group is not the right set of people to  be
> discussing the future of the printing model in Firefox and 
> Thunderbird.  By all means put together a proposal for improving how  we
> print on Linux, but please don't think that it will be accepted  simply
> by fiat (even my mighty fiat, ahem!).  I also caution against  what
> we've seen as a pattern so far, which is "well, then we'll just  patch
> our build", for various reasons that aren't really appropriate  for this
> list.
> 
> Mike
> 
> 

I think, the Firefox/Thunderbird dialog has to be replaced urgently, I
do not know how the original one looks like (I am on Mandriva 2006), but
when one clicks on "Properties" and gets a cryptic printing command line
to edit, I think this is far from user-friendly. Then a long list of PPD
options is already MUCH better.

What are the exact rquirements for a Firefox/Thunderbird printing
dialog? Who in the Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird team is responsible for
the dialog? So that one can talk with him.

   Till