Printing a Gnome canvas (2nd episode)

[Jean Bréfort <jbrefort wanadoo fr>]

Hi,

I have not written much code yet, being very busy thehe times, but I 
have perhaps found a solution to avoid making libgnomecanvas dependent 
to libgnomeprint. The drwoback is that it will add a new dependency to 
libgnomeprint. Here is my idea:

The only thing I need to print the canvas is a GnomePrintContext. If we 
have a parent type for GnomePrintContext, say GPrintContext, we just 
have to make GnomePrintContext a descendant of GPrintContext and put 
into GPrintContextClass pointers to almost every 
gnome_print_context_xxx(...). The default corresponding 
g_print_context_xxx just emit a warning.

Where to put this new type? There are et leat three possibilities: a 
separate library (just for that, it will be very thin), libgnomecanvas 
or glib. I don't think that the second option is the good one because 
other types could use the GPrintContext mechanism (may be PangoLayout 
(would be great in my opinion)). I don't know if the GLib option is 
acceptable (does GLib have something o do with printing?) so the 
separate library might be the best solution unless someone has a better 
idea.

Note that it would add other possibilities as GPrintContext might have 
several descendant which could be used to other things that printing. I 
think, as an example, to export procedures to vectorial graphics formats 
such as SVG.

Best regards,

Jean Bréfort
<jean brefort ac-dijon fr>