Print Card is broken in Linux because of resolution dependence

Peter Alcibiades palcibiades-first at yahoo.co.uk
Wed Mar 31 10:34:02 EDT 2010


Print Card is broken in Linux.  The problem is a general one with 
resolution dependence, and it is the same thing that makes the IDE 
unreadable on a larger screen.  Here is what showed it.

I used a 19 inch screen set to the normal resolution, and printed a card to 
cups-pd.  I then also printed to a kyocera physical printer.   I did this 
using the message box, changing the printerName between PDF and kyocera. 
Then I printed the pdf file generated by cups-pdf to the kyocera using 
kpdf.  

Both prints came out on paper correctly sized, and identical.

I then changed the screen resolution to 800 x 600, and repeated the 
experiment.  They both came out enlarged, so that the card did not fit on 
the page, but they were identical.  

It follows that cups-pdf and a real printer work identically in Rev.  But 
print card works differently on both with the identical parameters if the 
resolution of the monitor changes.

Conclusion:  in Linux, if you change screen res, the identical scripts will 
no longer print cards in the same way.  This is because the print card 
command is in some way tied to the resolution of the screen being used.  
The problem is nothing to do with Linux printing, print drivers, anything 
like that, its specific to Rev and how Rev has implemented the print card 
function.  Its not the fault of Linux either, since no other app has this 
problem.  Just as no other app has the Linux font problem.

Since revPrintField is not properly usable in Linux for different reasons, 
this means that the current version of Rev for Linux does not support 
printing.  

The resolution dependence thing is also a real problem in regard to the 
IDE.  On the 19 inch screen everything is fine, the dictionary is readable, 
the icons are about right.  On my 22 inch screen at home, you need to use a 
magnifying glass to be able to read the dictionary which looks like its 4 
point.  So on my machine at home, basically I have unusable printing and an 
unreadable IDE.  On the application site, the IDE is usable, but printing 
isn't.  

You see the problem this creates, when coupled with the lack of support for 
multiple desktops.  You want readable fonts in the IDE, fine, you have all 
your different windows all overlapping one behind the other.  You get a big 
screen, they don't overlap anymore, but now they are unreadable.

Plan B is going to have to be used for printing.  I had hoped to be able to 
hack it with cups-pdf, but from the above, this obviously does nothing to 
solve the problem.  Plan B involves hacking around with awk after putting 
all the text into a text file to generate some kind of readable report.  
What a waste of time!

So, question is, what is the plan?  Is the plan to continue shipping Linux 
versions with no usable printing?  Or is it to fix it, and if so by when?

Peter



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