Re: High level layout API for gnome print

[Tony Graham <Tony Graham Sun COM>]

Dave Malcolm <david davemalcolm demon co uk> wrote at Wed, 29 Oct 2003 16:23:25 +0000:
> On Fri, 2003-10-24 at 14:46, Will Newton wrote:
...
> > I was referring to being able to output to gnome print exactly (or close 
> > enough) what is shown on screen similar to Xprint. A "print screen" 
> > functionality.
> 
> 
> To throw a couple of ideas into the discussion:
> 
> (i) xmlroff is attempting to allow you to hook XSL-FO directly into
> Gnome Print; see http://xmlroff.sourceforge.net/

xmlroff is attempting to be an open-source XSL formatter.

> AFAIK it has an intermediate stage in which it generates a tree of areas
> that have been reached their final position on the pages; they are

True.

> GObject subclasses.  There's been some talk of exposing these, so

Also true.

> perhaps there could be an API at this level (and, I hope an XML

Yes, the area tree will, when someone implements the functionality, be
exposed so it can be tweaked.

> serialisation format).  This might be a good interchange format that you

An XML serialisation of the just area tree wouldn't be much good since
the information that won't change if you move an area -- e.g., the
foreground and background colours -- is back in the formatting object
tree.

An XML serialisation of some information -- such as the page numbers
of formatting objects with IDs -- may be useful for indexes,
multi-volume sets, or processing large document in chunks, but I
personally don't see an XML serialisation of everything as being
particularly useful.

> could generate your data in and send to GnomePrint.

I hope not.  That sounds like a job for SVG, not for an
implementation-dependent serialisation of data structures.

Regards,


Tony Graham
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