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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: karbon being DPI based (was karbon)
From:       Nicolas Goutte <nicolasg () snafu ! de>
Date:       2003-10-27 13:30:01
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On Monday 27 October 2003 02:24, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> Nicolas Goutte wrote:
> > On Sunday 26 October 2003 22:32, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> >>Tomasz Grobelny wrote:
> >>>On Sunday 26 of October 2003 07:57, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> >>>>not make mistakes like Troll Tech made with the PostScript driver.
> >>>
> >>>I haven't followed the whole discussion (although I've read part of it)
> >>>but I would like to ask what are the mistakes Trolltech made. Not that I
> >>>think QPainter + QPrinter is enough for office suite but I would like to
> >>>know more on this subject (especially image rendering).
> >>
> >>You know.  Problems caused by trying to have the printed image match the
> >>screen.
> >>
> >>I found a new one last week.  It seems that if you print an HTML page
> >> from Konqueror that the size of a JPEG which it contains will depend on
> >> the screen resolution you set in X.  So, if you have a higher resolution
> >> screen, the image might get too wide for US Letter or ISO A4 paper. :-(
> >>
> >>Clearly, it should scale the page so that it was the correct width for
> >>whatever size paper you chose -- that the screen width is scaled to the
> >>width of the paper less your margins or reasonable default minimums (0.25
> >>inch/18 Points for US letter [based on 8 inches being the maximum that
> >> many 8.5 inch printers will print]).
> >>
> >>It appears that a default resolution of 72 DPI applies if I print a JPEG
> >>from the: "Image Viewer part", so it is going to be smaller than the
> >> screen image (in most cases) and there is no way to adjust it.
> >
> > Yes, Qt prints images at 72dpi. And yes I hate it too, see my one of
> > other emails of today (the one about the Qt wish.) It is exactly the same
> > problem.
>
> Since the Qt PostScript driver prints HTML pages at the screen resolution,
> I suspect that there must be some way for KDE to change this setting.

Interesting info, I just hope that we can make somthing out of it. (Increasing 
the size of the image is not really what we need either.)

>
> >>In both cases, the actual image is embedded in the PS file and it is left
> >>to the printer or GhostScript to interpolate it to the printer
> >> resolution. This is correct for a generic PS file, but certainly not the
> >> best choice for printing.
> >>
> >>My usual rant applies:
> >>
> >>"Did anybody design this before they wrote the code?"
> >
> > Well, first one is happy that it prints at all. Then one does more work.
> > Or would you prefer that KWord does not print because we are using that
> > screen==printer mode of QPrinter?
>
> That is a hard question. :-)  Since it does not use the font metrics in the
> font files, it is basically useless for many purposes.

Yes, but on the other side, useful for many others (including DTP it seems or 
we would not have at least 2 DTP users of KOffice.)

>
> You said that we are using the screen==printer mode.  Is there another
> mode?  I thought that there wasn't.  I didn't read the code very carefully
> -- just skimmed through it looking for the parts where the font names are
> put in the PS files.

See the Qt doc about QPrinter::printerMode. I am not sure where the change is 
but there is one or we could change the printMode without any problem (which 
is not the case.)

>
> > Note: I am not saying that we could[n't] do better. (My question is
> > always where to find the manpower to also do changes.)
>
> My complaint here was really about Troll Tech and they hire people to do
> this, don't they?  But, I have the theory that it probably would take less
> manpower to first design something and then build it rather than several
> iterations of building it and making large changes.

Here I was writing about things that exist since Qt3 and that KOffice has not 
used yet. The Qt docs are clear that printing in the default mode is of low 
quality.

Design is one part of programming. If it can help you to avoid errors, fine; 
if not, you have to re-design. That is pretty much what is used.

Sure you can always design better. For example if KHTML would have been 
designed to be open, we could have a nice HTML import filter for KWord. It 
was not designed that way because nobody thought of something else than of a 
HTML viewer for Konqueror. It is always pretty hard to know what will be 
needed in future.

Another example, when KWord was created, could it have been designed to use 
OOWriter's file format? No, because this format did not even exist. So we 
have to do the manpower-intensive job of changing the file format for KWord 
1.4.

Designing is good, but, as any programming technique, it does not solve all.

>
> >>Note that it is no problem to print an image whatever size you want by
> >>running the image through The GIMP and making a PS file but The GIMP is
> >>certainly over-kill for this
> >
> > Simply saving the image and giving it to lpr or kprinter should do the
> > same if the print filter are set correctly.
>
> If just giving it to Kprinter will fix the problem, one wonders why it
> doesn't do the same if the "Image Viewer part" gives it to it.  Yes, I
> know, it doesn't generate a PS file, but again, why can't you do that from
> the "Image Viewer part"?

Because it would mean that every user has his print filter system set 
correctly. (That means every distribution!) Are you sure that it works so? 
(Also it is an historic problem: KView is older than KDE's print system.)

Have a nice day!
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