422184 - The fgPrinters extension could be included to improve printing experience in calendar

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: Printing, enhancement)

Description

[Rasmus P. R.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4
Build Identifier: Lightning 0.8 build 2008031019

The default printing options in Calendar are mediocre at best, and the JS file on which the templates build, are not easy for non-programmers to edit. Thus, Calendar users have little choice but to accept the default, non-editable  templates of Calendar. 
To me, and probably lots of other people, it is of great importance to be able to reproduce one's calendar on paper.
The fgprinters extension by Ferdinand Grassman is, on the other hand, miles ahead of the default printing options! 
   http://www.grassmann.info/fgPrinters.xpi
IMO it would be a great leap forward to include fgPrinters into Calendar as default. It would not only make Calendar a great computer calendar, but also a great printed calendar. 

FgPrinters lets the user chose font sizes, whether to use solid colors or borders on events and other things. It also adds a couple of alternative or new printing styles. 

Reproducible: Always




The extension can be found here:
   http://www.grassmann.info/fgPrinters.xpi

A thread discuss it at MozillaZine here: 
   http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=528746

Comment 1

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

The FG Printers extension is already available from <https://addons.mozilla.org/sunbird/addon/4648>. But there doesn't seem enough users that use and review it because it's still in the sandbox area.

The print system in Sunbird/Lightning was designed to easily add new print layouts via extension. FG Printers is the first extension that does this, more will probably follow. I'm not sure if this extension should be added to the core just to avoid installing an extension.

Comment 2

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

I don't think we should just include the whole extension, but I could imagine taking over some of the print formats on a per case basis. Please propose specific print views that should be taken over, possibly including screenshots.

Comment 3

[Cedric]

I would second Rasmus's opinion : the fgPrinters print formats are far better than the original ones, and can be customized.
What about replacing the default print formats by the fgPrinters formats ?
Many enhancement requests are now open, asking for more advanced printing options.

Comment 4

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

If it turns out that all of the fgPrinter views make sense for calendar core, then I'm happy to replace the printer formats, but its not just that simple. I'd appreciate if someone could attach a screenshot of each print view, I only saw one view on the addons.m.o site. Aside from that, the code still needs code review and of course we should contact the author about this.

Comment 5

[Cedric]

Attachment: An example of the FG ListView print layout

Comment 6

[Cedric]

Attachment: An example of the FG Monthly Grid print layout

Comment 7

[Cedric]

Attachment: An another example of the FG Monthly Grid with other options

Comment 8

[Cedric]

Attachment: An example of the FG TimeSheet print layout

Comment 9

[Cedric]

Attachment: An example of the FG Weekly Planner print layout

Comment 10

[Cedric]

Attachment: An example of the FG Year View print layout

Comment 11

[Ferdinand Grassmann]

If I may add my 2 cents: The (first) purpose of my extension was to make the views somewhat configurable (besides adding TimeSheet view). So *I* think it would make sense to add the modified views into the Calendar core (replacing the existing ones), thus providing a printout that can be adjusted to the needs of the user without any extension.

Adding new views may be a little different, as Stefan wrote: That is what extensions could be used for. *BUT* I also think that something like the TimeSheet view should also be included, as this tries to resemble the screen layout, and many users seem to [need|want] that kind of printout.

Year View does not really need the Calendar framework (items etc.), but was requested for special purposes. I am not sure whether such a view should be included in the core project - although this probably makes adjustments in future versions easier.

Yours,

fgrassmann

Comment 13

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Its been a while, but given I didn't have fgPrinters in mind when filing the previous duplicate bug its long overdue I reply here.

I think we should integrate the fgPrinters extension. I agree to what Ferdinand says and think the timesheet view should and the year view layout should not be integrated yet.

Ferdinand, do you have cycles left to prepare a patch that I could review? I would appreciate if you could adapt the filenames to fit what we have in the tree and make sure the code style is aligned to what we normally use. A guideline can be found at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Style_Guide. It doesn't have to be perfect, but the basic stuff should match.

Comment 14

[Ferdinand Grassmann]

(In reply to comment #13)

> Ferdinand, do you have cycles left to prepare a patch that I could review? I
> would appreciate if you could adapt the filenames to fit what we have in the
> tree and make sure the code style is aligned to what we normally use. A
> guideline can be found at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Style_Guide. It
> doesn't have to be perfect, but the basic stuff should match.

Philipp,

I really do want to do this - but as you can see with this reply, Calendar stuff is not the things I do daily lately :-(. I will have a look at the style guide and try to prepare the patches - one after another.

BUT: I created some tabs in the AddOn properties to change the printer layout settings. And I have to admit that I do not know how and where to integrate that. Most logical would be - I think - the Page Setup dialog. But again: I do not have a clue how to add items there. Could anybody help with that?

Comment 15

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Ferdinand, I'm happy to take over the page setup dialog integration and if you need help adapting the style I can also help with that. Maybe you can send me the current state of your integration and I'll see what I can do.

Comment 16

[Vincent (caméléon)]

Would be very great to have this bug fix because "FG printers" isn't updated for TB5 and 6, and it is often asked by our users (see on GSFN or on http://www.geckozone.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=96975&p=645141 )

Comment 17

[Jeff Alexander]

What's the state of this as of now?  I don't know anything about Thunderbird development, but I'm reasonable good with Javascript (and I've made some modifications to fgPrinters Month view) and would be willing to help with the coding conventions in that part of the project.  I don't recall if the source code is hosted somewhere.  Would that help move this along?

Comment 18

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Jeff, looking forward to you helping out! I don't know if the source code is hosted somewhere, but you could very well just unpack the extension. I'd suggest talking to Ferdinand for details.

Comment 19

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Hi diesmo. Since you have created the addon at http://xul.addons.free.fr/fgprinters/ do you think you could invest some time to port the addon to the core Lightning codebase?

Note that I have rewritten parts of the backend (not the interface though) in bug 757902, so the mechanisms used there could make integrating this much easier. 

Also, the integration requires to adhere (or at least go near) some coding standards, I think I've linked the style guide somewhere. Don't let this discourage you though. If its not perfect, thats ok. We just need something to start out with that is a little bit more than just dumping the files from fgprinters into Lightning.

Comment 20

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

(In reply to Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] from comment #18)
> Jeff, looking forward to you helping out! I don't know if the source code is
> hosted somewhere, but you could very well just unpack the extension. I'd
> suggest talking to Ferdinand for details.

Jeff, any updates?

Comment 21

[Jeff Alexander]

Sorry all, I had the best intentions but but then I had a son and that trumped the intentions.

I did hear from Ferdinand that he considers the repository he had to basically be defunct, so I think just going directly to the code inside the extension is the way to go.  I don't have very much time available, but I will try to help out with this where I can.

Comment 22

[diesmo]

Hello,

The addon was created by Ferdinand Grassmann, i only made some modifications to make it work with TB 4 and over. All credits go to Ferdinand Grassmann.

This said, i'm willing to help if i can. Where can i find the style guide, please ?

Thank you.

Comment 23

[diesmo]

Attachment: Modified Lightning 1.8a1 - with fgprinters

Comment 24

[diesmo]

Attachment: Patch of Lightning 1.8a1 - with fgprinters

Comment 25

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Hi diesmo, thanks for stepping up!!

* You can find the calendar style guide here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Style_Guide
* Unfortunately, e4x support was nerfed in latest comm-central. On the dowside this means it needs to be replaced, on the upside this gave me a chance to respin the print support architecture a bit. Whatever happens here needs to be based on the patch in bug 757902. I will upload a new patch on that bug today that fixes the errors mentioned in the last comments. With this patch, you have the possibility to insert a html page and then use the js code to set the values which makes it much cleaner than what we had before, putting the html in fragments in the JS.

If this is too much, could you at least remove the extra bits from that patch in comment 24 (i.e the extra locales, binary files)?

Comment 26

[diesmo]

Hi,

I added 2 files in the attachments :
 - lightning-snapshot.xpi : modified 1.8a1 to include fgprinters
 - patch : corresponding patch

The option pane from fgprinters is too tall/wide, it breaks Thunderbird's UI.
I reduced the labeld, but it's not enough. Do you have any guideline ? Either add a tab for fonts, or add an "advanced" button with some of the preferences ?

For the locale, english only at the moment.

Modifications are :
 - fgprinters List, Week, Month replace lightning ones
 - Week Planner (Year in progress) added
 - preferences renamed to calendar.printing
 - option pane put in lightning new "printing" tab

I'm waiting for a review (bugs, rendering issues, coding). Thank you.

Comment 27

[diesmo]

Hello Philipp, Ok then, i'll have a look at bug 757902 and get rid of e4x.

I still need the guideline for the option pane being to tall/wide, please (what shall i do ?). For delivery, how do i attach modifications ? 

I made modifications to the code and the labels, should i attach 1 patch for code, and 1 for locale ?

Thanks.

Comment 28

[diesmo]

Attachment: Patch of Lightning 1.8a1 - with fgprinters - E4X

Added Year View
Removed localization patch (separate patch)

Comment 29

[diesmo]

Attachment: Patch of Lightning 1.8a1 - calendar-en-US modifications - E4X

Comment 30

[diesmo]

Attachment: Modified Lightning 1.8a1 - with fgprinters - E4X

Added Year View

Comment 31

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Thanks for the patches. I think this will be a great addition to Lightning, but I'm not really sure about adding preferences for changing colors and font styles. I think we should just pick some (nicer) defaults instead. 

Maybe what we can do is convert the new layouts to the html format similar to how I do it in bug 757902 and convert the actual fgprinters extension to an extension that allows to change colors and styles. What do you (and Ferdinand) think?

Comment 32

[Ferdinand Grassmann]

Philipp,

I started this extension to make the printing experience of Lightning as configurable as possible, because I know that almost everbody has a different taste of what looks good. I personally would therefore vote to at least include a color picker in the configuration dialog. Additionally, I am very thankful that diesmo has the opportunity to provide the patches provided, as I (for peronal reasons) do not have any time to do any coding in the foreseeable future. 

Thank all of you for your great work,

fg

Comment 33

[diesmo]

Attachment: Modification of html print layout for lightning

Comment 34

[diesmo]

Hello all,

Excellent idea Philipp.

One thing though :
Some information is important for the users (location, organizer, attendees). 
Can we add this to lightning, or should it be in a separate addon ?

You can see the (draft) attachment proposal : additional options in the print dialog to show/hide some properties (location, organizer, attendees). This would be available only in some views (list, maybe weekly).

Thank you.

Comment 35

[fabio9]

(In reply to Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] from comment #19)
> Hi diesmo. Since you have created the addon at
> http://xul.addons.free.fr/fgprinters/ do you think you could invest some
> time to port the addon to the core Lightning codebase?
> 
> Note that I have rewritten parts of the backend (not the interface though)
> in bug 757902, so the mechanisms used there could make integrating this much
> easier. 
> 
> Also, the integration requires to adhere (or at least go near) some coding
> standards, I think I've linked the style guide somewhere. Don't let this
> discourage you though. If its not perfect, thats ok. We just need something
> to start out with that is a little bit more than just dumping the files from
> fgprinters into Lightning.

Thanks, thanks, thanks - now I've got a working version of fgprinters again.

I would like to be able to select/unselect the calendars from the "print-options" menu, even more with the new fgprinters-possibilities. The reason ist I have some calendar-items with lots of text on specific week days. Now, on the screen, the amount of text is visible only as a popup. But in the printed version the full text comes (which generally is necessary).

It would enrich performance of that addon, if -like choosing different fg-options in printing the calendar- I could also select/unselect the calendars at this point of the process. - At time I always have to stop the process, unselect certain calendars in lightning, again choos the printing menu, print, an re-select the calendar in lightning again. - A bit complicated, don't you think?

Fabio.

Comment 36

[diesmo]

Attachment: Proposed modification of calendar-printing

Sorry, it's been a long time...

Here is a snapshot, with :
 - Weekly Timesheet : same thing as lightning "week" view
 - Daily Timesheet : same thing as lightning "day" view
 - (the other views need to be recoded)

A few default options (using the options button in the addon panel) ; to me these are the options that needs to be in the core

I leave it as an addon until it's reviewe (features/bugs/code review).

I'm still working on the other print views, and the additional addon for advanced customisations. For this addon, the addon handles the preferences, generates a style sheet, sets a preference with the path of this stylesheet, lightning handle this preference.

Comment 37

[Vincent (caméléon)]

As Lightning 1.9 will have new printing options, is this bug still valid?

Comment 38

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Lightning 1.9 does not add new printing options. Printing options are the same as in the previous releases. Only a few regressed bugs in the existing printing options have been fixed.

Comment 39

[ThierryM]

Hi everybody,
I'm discovering this extension for printing Lightning calendar for Thunderbird 24.2 (in french) and it's very usefull !!! So thanks for this : acoording to me, this extension should be integrated in Lightning.
I saw that I can print saturday and sunday together (only 1 column for these days) with the good options. But for a school, I would print a month view without saturday and sunday. Could it be possible to improve the options in order to provide this new possibility of printing (only 5 days of the weeks without the week-ends) ?
Thanks for all, regards,

Thierry