Leafpad - Printing to a second printer?

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edoc
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Leafpad - Printing to a second printer?

#1 Post by edoc »

Is it possible to add a printer to the Leafpad Print utility?

I have a HP OfficeJet connected to my laptop in the office and Leafpad sees it
but I'd like to be able to print to the laser printer in the next room as well.

AbiWord and Seamonkey can see and print to the laser printer.

Help, please?
[b]Thanks! David[/b]
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rcrsn51
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#2 Post by rcrsn51 »

If an application doesn't give you a choice of printers, the usual procedure is to go into the print queue manager (XPDQ or CUPS) and change the default printer.

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edoc
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#3 Post by edoc »

rcrsn51 wrote:If an application doesn't give you a choice of printers, the usual procedure is to go into the print queue manager (XPDQ or CUPS) and change the default printer.
I was hoping to hear that Leafpad was planning to add a printer selection feature or that
Puppy 2.14 was going to replace Leafpad with a more printing-robust app.

mtPaint is another disappointing app with it's inability to print. Anyone aware of plans to
rectify that by the mtPaint folks? I can hope ... and meanwhile load a second image editor
that does support printing ... more bulk, more complexity. Sigh.
[b]Thanks! David[/b]
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wjaguar
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#4 Post by wjaguar »

edoc wrote:mtPaint is another disappointing app with it's inability to print. Anyone aware of plans to rectify that by the mtPaint folks? I can hope ... and meanwhile load a second image editor that does support printing ... more bulk, more complexity. Sigh.
If you want integrated printing in mtPaint, then why not provide a patch implementing it? This is free software - you aren't entitled to anything, and if developers don't want the same thing as you do, tough luck.

A year ago, I wanted to have alpha channel supported in mtPaint - and look where that got me. :-) For my sins, I'm now the new maintainer of mtPaint - and I wonder if having mtPaint 3 support channels was worth this new responsibility.

Returning to the problem at hand - to this day, Linux has _nothing_ resembling a single integrated printing API like one in Windows. And while for text printing, converting a page to Postscript, sending it to printer daemon and hoping for the best is usually enough, not so with images - given the multitude of colour printers with widely different capabilities out there, without proper preprocessing by either the driver or the application itself the printed picture would likely look quite crappy.

mtPaint is intended for drawing pixel art - it's NOT a photo processor, even if it has some of the capabilities; myself, I don't even HAVE a colour printer, and naturally am not interested in supporting it. While I could add a baseline printing tool like what's described above, I don't see any worth in wasting code on such half-assed "solution" that doesn't really solve anything. There are already several Linux programs that are able to do a proper job - and besides, building "integrated solutions" which try to look like they're the whole OS is definitely not "the Unix way". ;-)

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#5 Post by edoc »

wjaguar wrote: If you want integrated printing in mtPaint, then why not provide a patch implementing it? This is free software - you aren't entitled to anything, and if developers don't want the same thing as you do, tough luck.
My experience has been that most developers want to know what users and
potential users need and then they seek ways to meet that need. Others only
code for their personal needs and share those results.

As for me writing a patch you give me far too much credit. It has been so long since
I wrote code or even wrote macros for dBase III+ I have forgotten more than I knew
then! :oops:
wjaguar wrote:A year ago, I wanted to have alpha channel supported in mtPaint - and look where that got me. :-) For my sins, I'm now the new maintainer of mtPaint - and I wonder if having mtPaint 3 support channels was worth this new responsibility.
You are to be congratulated! I wish I had the knowledge to do that, even though time
availability would constrain.
wjaguar wrote:Returning to the problem at hand - to this day, Linux has _nothing_ resembling a single integrated printing API like one in Windows.
I notice that Seamonkey can print to either of my printers, HP 4215 (color) and Samsung
(mono laser). Could mtPaint somehow send the image to Seamonkey when the user
asks it to print and let Seamonkey do the printer-interface heavy lifting?

I am speculating here as I lack the knowledge as to how this might be executed in a
simple manner. (As a kludge, could I save from mtPaint, then open that file in Seamonkey
and print it?)

CUPS has already handled all of the unique printer setup.
[b]Thanks! David[/b]
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[i]Don't google[/i] [b]Search![/b] [url]http://duckduckgo.com[/url]
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wjaguar
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#6 Post by wjaguar »

edoc wrote:My experience has been that most developers want to know what users and potential users need and then they seek ways to meet that need.
As they say, "Ninety percent of the users who have an opinion about your software, will have a misconception about what the software is supposed to do." :-)
And thing is, mtPaint is supposed to do pixel graphics. There are lots and lots of other tools for photo manipulation - but for pixeling, virtually everything else is obsolete, or discontinued, or both.
edoc wrote:I notice that Seamonkey can print to either of my printers, HP 4215 (color) and Samsung (mono laser). Could mtPaint somehow send the image to Seamonkey when the user
asks it to print and let Seamonkey do the printer-interface heavy lifting?
Interfacing to Seamonkey would be too tricky - but its printing implementation was an useful pointer nevertheless. After some googling around, I was able to find a tool which looks like it *could* provide the missing features which Windows users take for granted - GtkLP http://gtklp.sourceforge.net/
It's quite small (while only two times smaller than mtPaint itself) and likely will be able to work in Puppy, as like mtPaint, it can be compiled with GTK1.
So, maybe a "baseline" printing implementation will be enough for mtPaint after all, when augmented by GtkLP or something like it - I'm adding this to my to-do list for version 3.20 (which still doesn't mean it *will be* in 3.20 - like maybe half of features planned for 3.10 are now waiting for 3.20 instead).
edoc wrote:(As a kludge, could I save from mtPaint, then open that file in Seamonkey and print it?)
But naturally - Firefox opens image files quite well, and Seamonkey should too, being built on the same Gecko engine. Or else, for example, GtkLP could be used for the task - it has an integrated file selector, so it could be used both to select a file and to setup how it is to be printed.

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#7 Post by Auda »

(As a kludge, could I save from mtPaint, then open that file in Seamonkey
and print it?)
Thats what I do except I drag and drop it onto a firefox icon.
The inability to print is to my way of thinking a major omission from mtpaint. The other thing is load clipboard save clipboard, to me both those mean the same thing, what I have selected gets put on the clipboard. Off hand I cant think of a 2 word replacement, upload, download would have worked till people started "uploading" things to their computer from the internet. Lego gets it wrong as well. Copy to clipboard and Paste from clipboard would have to be the best option I can think of.

Auda

wjaguar
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#8 Post by wjaguar »

Auda wrote:The inability to print is to my way of thinking a major omission from mtpaint.
No program can be everything to everyone. Those that try to, end up as bloated monsters - and then one half of users still complains about program not doing this or that, and another starts complaining about it being overly large and complex; the GIMP is a good example of where that path leads.
This game is impossible to win, so I'm not playing it.
Auda wrote:The other thing is load clipboard save clipboard, to me both those mean the same thing, what I have selected gets put on the clipboard.
Don't you think that manuals are meant to be read? Doing that sometimes could save one from a lot of confusion.
Particularly, try reading section 4.6 "Multiple Clipboards" of the mtPaint manual.

marksouth2000
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#9 Post by marksouth2000 »

Puppy includes several (possibly dozens) apps that can print images, so I would like to cast a support vote for not bothering to add printing to mtpaint. One of the points of having a small light OS is that it's easy to open other apps to deal with things. And there's no logic in saying that every app should be able to do every conceivable thing with every file it can handle.

Small simple apps that are good at their own speciality is the Unix philosophy, and it works well.

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#10 Post by Auda »

Yes I have read parts of the manual and it is clearly explained how to use the clipboard. I just find the the terms confusing, save clipboard and load clipboard sound like they do the same thing, maybe its my grasp of english.

Auda

disciple
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#11 Post by disciple »

I installed a debian gtklp package in Grafpup 104 and it seems to work fine.

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#12 Post by edoc »

disciple wrote:I installed a debian gtklp package in Grafpup 104 and it seems to work fine.
Would it be possible to install that as an Alien Package in Puppy 2.14?

Or would it fail and/or create conflicts?

A video or text editor that neither prints nor provides a simple export to
a standard package app that will print is like a digital camera that provides
no method to output images. Or so it seems to me!
[b]Thanks! David[/b]
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disciple
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#13 Post by disciple »

No - you use undeb to extract the .deb archive, and then you need to move the files to the right place. But I have done it for you and made an alien package:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 023#114023

It seems to work in Puppy 2.14, although I'm not sure that it does provide the functionality they were looking for earlier in the thread and is only any good if you have CUPS, which is huge.

I suspect you can use the "custom" location from leafpad to specify a non-default printer - does anybody know how?

BTW lots of people around here have cellphones with cameras and no way of transfering the photos to anything else :)

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#14 Post by edoc »

disciple wrote:No - you use undeb to extract the .deb archive, and then you need to move the files to the right place. But I have done it for you and made an alien package:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 023#114023
Wow! Thanks! :-)
disciple wrote: It seems to work in Puppy 2.14, although I'm not sure that it does provide the functionality they were looking for earlier in the thread and is only any good if you have CUPS, which is huge.
I do have CUPS installed.
disciple wrote: I suspect you can use the "custom" location from leafpad to specify a non-default printer - does anybody know how?
I believe it is lpr P printername
disciple wrote: BTW lots of people around here have cellphones with cameras and no way of transfering the photos to anything else :)
Why is that? I can get the photos off my Nokia, either via USB cable or by
removing the memory chilp and reading that.
[b]Thanks! David[/b]
[i]Home page: [/i][url]http://nevils-station.com[/url]
[i]Don't google[/i] [b]Search![/b] [url]http://duckduckgo.com[/url]
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disciple
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#15 Post by disciple »

Ah - like this

lpr -Php

if my printer is called hp

Doesn't that solve your original problem?

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