228083 - KDE Printing support

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Printing: Output, enhancement)

Description

[Luke-Jr]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.1; Linux 2.6.0-test9-gentoo; X11; i686; en_US) (KHTML, like Gecko)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031103

It would be nice if Mozilla could print using the KDE print system natively instead of 
needing to run kprinter via the Postscript thing. KPrinter's dialog has many more 
options for printing that Mozilla's dialog currently prevents by giving it postscript. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Robert Accettura [:raccettura]]

I'm almost positive this is a dup, but I can't find what it's a dup of.  

Comment 2

[Jesiah S]

How about depends on bug 140751 b/c of bug 140751 comment 5.
What other options does native printer dialog give?

Comment 3

[Luke-Jr]

There's virtually an unlimited number of options based on things like what printer 
driver is used and such. Can't really list them... 

Comment 4

[Jesiah S]

Forgot to mark new.  So it depends on what driver is used?  Either way I would
like this bug fixed because I wouldn't have to click print twice:)

Comment 5

[Kev Swindells]

More advantages of using the Kprint dialogue nativly are that :-

1. No need to change the printing command to "lp" to get Mozilla (also Netscape
7 and Firefox) to print anything.

2. Are able to send it to a differnt printer, perhaps when the primary printer
is faulty, or I want to print in colour, or I need a high quality print out
instead of using the printer configured as draft mode.

3. Can use duplex printing when avaible

4. Can print multiple pages per sheet (with duplex printing this saves a huge
amount of paper when printing out manuals and the like)

5. Standard print dialogue across more applications (like in Windows)

6. Also, occassionally (worse in Netscape 7.0, but still happens in Firefox)
when printing from mozilla via kprint the job just gets lost somewhere along the
line, hopefully integrated properly will reduce the chances of this happening.

Some other driver specific things - am able to store the job on the printer,
specify binding, stapeling, hold the job till later (i can print that 200 page
cups manual once everyone has left the office for instance)

Comment 6

[Kev Swindells]

More advantages of using the Kprint dialogue nativly are that :-

1. No need to change the printing command to "lp" to get Mozilla (also Netscape
7 and Firefox) to print anything.

2. Are able to send it to a differnt printer, perhaps when the primary printer
is faulty, or I want to print in colour, or I need a high quality print out
instead of using the printer configured as draft mode.

3. Can use duplex printing when avaible

4. Can print multiple pages per sheet (with duplex printing this saves a huge
amount of paper when printing out manuals and the like)

5. Standard print dialogue across more applications (like in Windows)

6. Also, occassionally (worse in Netscape 7.0, but still happens in Firefox)
when printing from mozilla via kprint the job just gets lost somewhere along the
line, hopefully integrated properly will reduce the chances of this happening.

Some other driver specific things - am able to store the job on the printer,
specify binding, stapeling, hold the job till later (i can print that 200 page
cups manual once everyone has left the office for instance)

Comment 7

[Rex Dieter]

A nice quick-n-dirty hack is to print to "Postscript/default" and change the
print command from 'lpr' to 'kprinter'.

Comment 8

[Philip Withnall (unavailable)]

*** Bug 251292 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Matěj Cepl]

It seems to me to be dup of bugs at least bug 358393 and possibly even bug 102012.

But IMHO, as I liked KDE print dialog and print system a lot, the solution suggested by the original reporter doesn't make much sense to me. Firefox/Thunderbird/Seamonkey are GTK-based applications, so they should use native GTK tools (like libgtkprint*). And don't worry guys, GTK printing is pretty good these days (not like when Linus was trashing it ;-)). Using kprint and its friends would make sense IMHO only when some kind of kfirefox/kthunderbird happens.

Comment 11

[mutley dastardly]

I realy do need the KDE printer dialog - because i'm using it to print large amounts of webpage-sections to my archives...

So if there's no kprinter possibility...
I'd have to stay on version 2 forever! (something i down't want either - i realy do like version 3)

But i also realy, realy, realy NEED kprinter...

I'm begging to put it into the next version (next patch) of firefox 3 - otherwise i'd have to look to alternatives! (even paying for alternatives!)

Firefox is realy the best browser, but it's only usefull to me under linux when i can combine it with kprinter (for printing to pdf and tons of other stuff!)

The pdf-generation of cups is mediocre (and i'm still too friendly for that part of cups - cups is fine for a lot of things, but not PDF)!

Please, please, please...

Comment 12

[Noèl Köthe]

the hack from comment #7 doesn't work with firefox/iceweasel 3 anymore.:(

Comment 13

[Luke-Jr]

Presumably because KDE 4 doesn't have proper printing support (nor kprinter) anymore.

Comment 14

[Noèl Köthe]

Sorry I didn't mentioned. KDE 3.5.9 and Firefox 3.

Comment 15

[Tristan Miller]

(In reply to Luke-Jr from comment #13)
> Presumably because KDE 4 doesn't have proper printing support (nor kprinter)
> anymore.

KDE 4 uses the Qt 4 print dialog.  The official version works, but has a notorious bug which causes it to forget the print settings between invocations. Certain OS distributions (such as openSUSE) have patched it: <https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=552218>  The upstream bug has been fixed in Qt 5 <https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-6239> though KDE doesn't use that version of the toolkit (yet).

The purpose of this bug should no longer be to use kprinter (as the reporter asks) but to use the Qt print dialog.

Comment 16

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Looks like this has been quiet for a decade.

In that time, we've added and shipped our own built-in print dialog (via the effort in bug 133787). It's still possible to trigger a system print dialog, but it's somewhat-buried ("Print using the system dialog..." link at the bottom of our own print dialog).

Given that the GTK print dialog ~works for users on KDE and given that the system print dialog is now kinda-buried in Firefox's UI, I think we're unlikely to spent resources implementing & maintaining a KDE-specific tie-in for the system print dialog, at this point.