[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Printing support

[From: Tommi Komulainen]

On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 13:06 +0530, ext Abhijit Gupta wrote:
> 
> Hi,
>   Is there any plan to support printing in future ?
> Like integrating CUPS (Common UNIX Printing system)
> with the device..

There is nothing concrete yet, but printing is something we'll probably
have a look at eventually.  It might happen sooner if you help ;)

Basically printing with non-cairo gtk+ widgets is far from trivial.
>From what I've seen rendering to screen and to paper are more or less
unrelated code paths (just try to print the contents of GtkTextView, for
example.)  With cairo (gtk+ >= 2.8) this part should be much easier.

The other part is of course getting the bits all the way down to the
printer.  I'm not too familiar with current state of the art printing
support on Linux, but there are more options.  CUPS is one, and
bluetooth printing profile (I think) could be another.

Of course a quick hack is almost trivial (apt-get install lpr;
vi /etc/printcap) but to make it work really nicely (automatic printer
discovery, and such) isn't as easy.  Should be an interesting project,
though.


-- 
Tommi Komulainen                            <tommi.komulainen at nokia.com>