Ubuntu

Common Printing Dialog

Registered by Patrice Vetsel on 2006-05-29

Printing out of desktop applications is done/managed by very many different dialogs, mostly depending on which GUI toolkit is used for an application. Some applications like OpenOffice.org have even their own dialogs. This is confusing the users a lot, having them to do the printing operation in many different ways. In addition, many dialogs are missing important features.

Read the full specification

Blueprint information

Status:: Not started

Approver:: None

Priority:: Undefined

Drafter:: Till Kamppeter

Direction:: Needs approval

Assignee:: None

Definition:: New

Series goal:: None

Implementation:: Informational

Milestone target:: None

Related branches

Related bugs

Bug #458116: cups printer instances not usable from gtk applications	Triaged
Bug #487695: autoduplex constraints should be dropped	Fix Released
Bug #657357: GTK Printing Dialog: Duplex printing on HP inkjets does not work	Confirmed

Sprints

Whiteboard

This is an informational Blueprint serving just as a placeholder for UDS scheduling, as there are no action points for the Ubuntu side here.

This Blueprint will not be implemented by action coming from Ubuntu, like patching or changing the packaging. The implementation will completely be done upstream and the dialog will appear in Ubuntu as soon as the upstream packages contain it.

Instead of hacking all applications we should have a common printing dialog and the apps should have a common interface to use it. This is one of the main projects of OpenPrinting at the Linux Foundation. In 2008 and 2009 the dialog implementation was started by two Google Summer of Code students in each year, and in the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 the continuation of the development was funded by an organization of the German government. Currently we are looking for funding so that we can complete the first release of the dialog in time for the spring editions of the Linux distributions (Ubuntu 11.04/N).

General info about the Common Printing Dialog:

    * George Liu's OpenPrinting Summit 2009 Slides: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/images/4/4d/CommonPrintingDialogLF09.pdf
    * Peter Sikking's Blog about the Common Printing Dialog: http://www.mmiworks.net/eng/publications/labels/openPrinting.html
    * OpenUsability printing Wiki: http://wiki.openusability.org/printing/
    * UI design specification: http://wiki.openusability.org/printing/index.php/Specification
    * Specifications for PPD extension and application/dialog interface: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/CommonPrintingDialog
    * Portland project: http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/PrintDialog

The idea of the Common Printing Dialog designed by OpenUsability was brought in on the OSDL Printing Summit in April 2006 and work was continued on subsequent Printing Summits:

https://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MeetingInfo

-- Till Kamppeter, OpenPrinting

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