Reference (maybe Live) Distribution for Rev Linux

[Richard Gaskin]

Peter Alcibiades wrote:

> Two problems.
>
> First problem is in my Debian install, and here the problem is any sort of
> printing. Print card, print field, page setup.  As a for example, create a
> field, select it (this is in the IDE) and select Print from the file menu.
> There seem not to be any printers.  But every other application bar none can
> print, and not only do I have a physical printer configured, I have cupspdf,
> so I could print to pdf if it could see it or any of the printers that are
> set up.
>
> Second problem was on Mandriva in another install.  Here it was able to find
> the printer, and to print to it, but it truncated the file, and it was
> impossible to change the settings on the printer, for instance change the
> orientation or change the percentage zoom, to fit it all in.  If I recall
> correctly, the settings were there, they just had no effect, it came out the
> same no matter what you put them to.

Once the RQCC # was posted here I checked it out under Ubuntu 9.1. 
There I was able to use revPrintField to print to a .ps file, after 
changing the page size from the default A4 to US Letter.

I also checked using answer printer and answer page setup directly; both 
seem to work okay in that distro, at least partially:

I've found that while I can change page sizes, any change to orientation 
(Landscape vs Portrait) seems to have no effect.

I have not yet printed to a physical printer (I use mine only a few 
times a year); I'll try that soon.

Could this issue be specific to KDE?

To the others here:  Can you please test this on whatever Linux distros 
you're using and add your comments to the RQCC report for this so we can 
pin this down:

<http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=6478>

Thanks for you help on this.


PS -  An interesting side note in my testing:  While using Rev under 
Ubuntu I found that opening the Dictionary slowed everything in Rev to a 
painful crawl.  So I installed MetaCard there, and its Dictionary works 
very quickly with no adverse effect on overall performance as there was 
with Rev's.

The main difference between Rev's Dictionary and MC's is that MC's 
doesn't parse XML files from disk, but instead has everything included 
as cards in a single stack (in modern systems we've seen no memory 
limitation which would require otherwise; stacks work fine for the 
Dictionary even with 1600 cards; "know the engine, trust the engine, use 
the engine" <g>).

There are two things that come into play with the Rev Dictionary: file 
I/O, and XML parsing.

I know from my work with WebMerge on Linux that file I/O there seems 
efficient, on par with the other platforms.

So this has me wondering if the XML externals for Linux need a bit of a 
touch-up.

Any of you using the XML lib with Rev on Linux?  I tend to parse XML in 
script so I've not yet used it myself, and it would be good to confirm 
this hunch before I report it.

I wonder if Ken's scripted library would outperform Rev's external on Linux:
<http://sonsothunder.com/products/xmllib/xmllib.htm>

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
  revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv