list of known printers / default page size

[abel deuring <adeuring gmx net>]

Hi all,

I have two problems with gnomeprint, version 2.10.1:

(1) If gnome_print_config_from_string is called with data for a
definetely existing printer, before a print dialog has run, I get
the warning "Model not found, discarding config". As I understand
it, the list of known printers is built as late a while the dialog
is run. This makes it impossible to set up a printer from a stored
configuration. The problem occurs also in the . This is perhaps
related to this mail:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-print-list/2004-August/msg00026.html


This problem can easily be reproduced by running the script
examples/gnomeprint/example_09.py from gnome-python-extras.

I am currently using an ugly workaround: create a print dialog
during program start, iconify it as quickly as possible, wait a few
seconds and the delete it.

(2) Not necessarily a "pure" gnomeprint problem, but anyway:

If I try to print an A4 size page from gnomeprint via the Suse 9.3
print system (Cups, foomatic, Ghostscript and whatever else) to a
PCL printer, I get a too large top margin. If the identical data is
sent to a Postscript printer, the margins are correct. A small
modification of the Postscript code gives better margins for the PCL
printer. It seems that Ghostscript either does not understand the
page definition "/PageSize [595 842]" (A4 size in points) in line 35
of the Postscript code generated by gnomeprint (not very likely,
because postscript code generated by most programs is processed
fine), or that it interprets the lines 40 to 43 in a wrong way:

/Policies <<
/PolicyNotFound 1
/PageSize 3
>>

If I remove the line "/PageSize 3", the page is printed properly.

I guess that the page size number three means "letter". IMHO it is
not a good idea to set a "hard wired" fallback page size on the
application level: Firstly, the decision, what to do, if the
selected page size does not exist for a printer, should be left to
the user and/or the print system, but should not be made by an
application, and secondly, the C code generating the "/PageSize 3"
line is:

gnome_print_transport_printf (pc->transport, "/PageSize 3" EOL)

(file gnome-print-ps2.c, function
gnome_print_ps2_setpagedevice_policies). So, the page size "letter"
is hard-wired in the code -- but some parts of the world like Europe
use A4 as the the default page size, and in other regions people
might choose neither A4 nor letter as the default page size.

In short: I think that the "/PageSize 3" line should disappear from
the Postscript code generated by gnomeprint.

Abel