[Gambas-user] GTK and printing to printer

[Christopher Brian Jack]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Christopher Brian Jack wrote:

> Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 00:42:09 -0800 (PST)
> From: Christopher Brian Jack <brian at ...1334...>
> To: gambas-user at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: Re: [Gambas-user] GTK and printing to printer
>
> On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Rob Kudla wrote:
>
> > On Sun January 29 2006 00:48, Christopher Brian Jack wrote:
> > > > Not yet, I've not implemented the printer class. In fact
> > > > I'll need a separate component as printers are part of the
> > > > Gnome libraries, not the GTK libraries.
> > > What about using something like CUPS (Common Unix Printing
> > > System)?
> >
> > GNOME or Qt printing support is to CUPS as Gtk or Qt is to X.
> > They have different purposes, and in the case of high-level
> > application development, both are necessary.
> >
> > I thought gimp-print was part of Gtk now, though.
>
> If that is true then it should be possible to make a component that uses
> CUPS directly to implement a printing class independant of Qt and Gtk.
>

Alternatively make a printing class abstraction that outputs as PostScript
and use the available component(s) (Qt/Gtk/whatever future interface
components) to handle printing from the resulting PostScript.  This may
not solve the Gtk printing issue but it will make a standardized output
hence leaving an abstracted printer class that can make the final printing
output interface based on available components and/or Operating System and
environment.  I guess I'm forward thinking a bit to when there may
potentially be Gambas in Windows (or other OSes say like MacOSX).  It
seems to make sense to abstract printing to a single class the produces an
common intermediary that is independant to whichever low level printing
driver is ultimately available at runtime.

It just seems to be a lot of extra work to reimplement the entire printer
class for each new interface component that comes along (say a
gb.mingw.gdi for windows and a gb.carbon and/or gb.cocoa are produced by
developers who want to see Gambas on Windows and MacOSX)

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|  Christopher BRIAN Jack aka "Gau of the Veldt"  |
+================================================='
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| gau_veldt _AT_ hotmail _DOT_ com
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