[Printing-architecture] The Common Printing Dialog and PDF as standard print job format in OpenOffice.org

[Till Kamppeter]

Hi,

at OpenPrinting [0] we have developed several new technologies for 
making printing more reliable and much easier for the user. Currently, 
we have 5 Google Summer of Code students and so we get a lot of our 
ideas implemented. Two of our projects need changes in graphical 
applications and/or the GUI toolkit libraries, as for example 
OpenOffice.org. One is the Common Printing Dialog and the other is the 
use of PDF as the standard print job format. Both features have found a 
wide acceptance on the Printing Summits [10] and implementation has 
started now. especially with a lot of support from the printer 
manufacturers for the PDF printing workflow.


Common Printing Dialog
----------------------

As most of you already know, OpenPrinting and OpenUsability have 
developed a Common Printing Dialog for all desktops and applications 
[1], [2], [3]. Ubuntu blueprint at [9]. This should make printing much 
easier as if users get used how to print with application A they 
immediately know how to print from application B. It will also get 
assured that there is always access to all functionality of the printer 
(driver) and the printing system, requiring no effort from application 
developers. We would like to have the support from OpenOffice.org to 
make applications interfacing to the new dialog by a plug-in interface. 
This will not only allow to use our dialog as the common one but also 
any other one, as the ones from Qt or GTK for example.

The interface is designed and implemented by Lars Uebernickel, one of 
the Google Summer of Code students [7]. The specs for this interface are 
work in progress on [4]. Requirements are written up on [5]. This 
interface needs also to be implemented in the applications and/or their 
common GUI libraries, in our case OpenOffice.org. Lars will work on 
patching the application, but these patches should not only go into 
packages of Linux distributions but also into the upstream software 
repositories. So I ask you for working together with Lars to make these 
patches also part of the upstream code.

Patches should only be used as a backport of a feature from a future 
software version to the software in the current version of a 
distribution (in the case the software currently under development will 
not make it into the next releases of the distros).


PDF as the Standard Print Job Format
------------------------------------

To improve the reliability of the printing process, especially for 
complex graphics, high color depths, and for jobs where pages get 
separated and reordered (2 pages per sheet, booklets, selected pages, 
...) we are switching from PostScript to PDF as standard print job format.

The server (printing system) side is nearly completely implemented in 
the form of new CUPS filters and file conversion rules.

On the client (application) side it is needed that the applications 
generate the print jobs in PDF and not in Postscript. This would mean a 
change of the print job generation part of OpenOffice.org. As 
OpenOffice.org has an excellent "Export to PDF" function, there will not 
be needed much new code. One can use this functionality to generate 
print jobs, using PDF settings optimized for printing.

This is not absolutely urgent, as CUPS can convert PostScript to PDF 
with a pstopdf filter, but applications which directly produce PDF have 
a better control over the graphical quality of the print job, and they 
even solve page management (2 on a sheet, booklets, selected pages, ...) 
problems on old PostScript-based servers, as a CUPS filter will generate 
PostScript from the incoming PDF then (pdftops) and this PostScript is 
much cleaner as the one coming from most applications.

So I am asking you whether you can change OpenOffice.org to make the 
"Print" command emitting PDF instead of PostScript. To not break lagacy, 
non-PDF-capable environments, make this a configurable option.

I am very grateful for any support from the OpenOffice.org side in terms 
of these OpenPrinting projects. They will improve the printing workflow 
a lot and will make many bugs and user complaints go away.

    Till


[0]http://www.openprinting.org/
[1]http://www.mmiworks.net/eng/publications/labels/openPrinting.html
[2]http://wiki.openusability.org/printing/
[3]http://wiki.openusability.org/printing/index.php/Specification
[4]http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Specifications
[5]http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Requirements
[6]http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/PrintDialog
[7]http://code.google.com/soc/2008/linux/appinfo.html?csaid=53E53CD78F134BE9
[8]http://code.google.com/soc/2008/linux/appinfo.html?csaid=9D65D29842F34550
[9]https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/applications-printing
[10]https://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MeetingInfo
[11]https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/pdf-as-standard-print-job-format