gramps

Don Allingham wrote:

> The GNOME print interface has been completed due to the efforts of 
> Billy Earny and Alex Roitman. Alex, being one of the two project 
> managers, is ineligible for the bounty. Billy Earny has requested that 
> portion of the bounty be put back into the bounty program.

Sorry, I had a typo here. Billy has requested that his entire portion of 
the bounty be returned back to the bounty program.

After reading what I originally wrote, I realized that it could easily 
be misinterpreted.

Don

Alex Roitman wrote:

> I was thinking about the earlier plans to obsolete reportlab's PDF
> plugin and the PS plugin. Now that we have a working gnome-print  
> plugin, I'm starting to doubt whether we should remove reportlab and  
> PS, even when LPRDoc becomes production quality in the future.
>
> The reason is that, being fully internationalized, gnome-print embeds  
> the fonts within PS/PDF. This is about the only choice for non-latin  
> output, but is a huge overhead for latin-only contents.
>
> As Frode Jemtland noticed, the latin-only PDFs created with reportlab  
> are a lot smaller than the ones created by LPRDoc.
>
> So, the question for the near future is: whether we want to have one  
> way of creating PDFs (gnome-print) and pay the unnecessary overhead  
> when using latin text, or whether we leave an option for latin 
> contents  to use reportlab plugin producing leaner PDFs. The reportlab 
> is an  extra dependency, of course.
>
> I personally would keep both. Since they're plugins, not having the  
> appropriate backend (reportlab or gnomeprint)  would rule out using 
> the  corresponding plugin. That way the users can always choose the 
> backend  fitting their needs. 

Maintaining the PDFDoc.py interface is actually a small effort. The 
installation issue has always been the bigger problem. ReportLab seems 
to be nicely packaged only for debian, so most people do not use it.

The gnome-print option will provide PDF for a larger audience, since the 
needed libraries should all be installed together (starting with 
gnome-python 2.0 or greater).

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I agree that keeping the 
current PDF generation is probably a good idea.

Don

Don,

On 03/22/2004 11:11:15 AM, Don Allingham wrote:
> Direct printing and print preview is a major new enhancement to the
> project. I will try to post screenshots later this evening.

I was thinking about the earlier plans to obsolete reportlab's PDF
plugin and the PS plugin. Now that we have a working gnome-print =20
plugin, I'm starting to doubt whether we should remove reportlab and =20
PS, even when LPRDoc becomes production quality in the future.

The reason is that, being fully internationalized, gnome-print embeds =20
the fonts within PS/PDF. This is about the only choice for non-latin =20
output, but is a huge overhead for latin-only contents.

As Frode Jemtland noticed, the latin-only PDFs created with reportlab =20
are a lot smaller than the ones created by LPRDoc.

So, the question for the near future is: whether we want to have one =20
way of creating PDFs (gnome-print) and pay the unnecessary overhead =20
when using latin text, or whether we leave an option for latin contents =20
to use reportlab plugin producing leaner PDFs. The reportlab is an =20
extra dependency, of course.

I personally would keep both. Since they're plugins, not having the =20
appropriate backend (reportlab or gnomeprint)  would rule out using the =20
corresponding plugin. That way the users can always choose the backend =20
fitting their needs.

As always, the trade-off is between the choice versus user-intuitive =20
setup. With too many choices things quickly become confusing, =20
especially for the new users.

What are the thoughts about the PDF creation in the future gramps?

Alex

--=20
Alexander Roitman   http://ebner.neuroscience.umn.edu/people/alex.html
Dept. of Neuroscience, Lions Research Building
2001 6th Street SE, Minneapolis, MN  55455
Tel (612) 625-7566   FAX (612) 626-9201

man, 22.03.2004 kl. 18.46 skrev Alex Roitman: 
> Don,
> 
> On 03/22/2004 11:11:15 AM, Don Allingham wrote:
> > Direct printing and print preview is a major new enhancement to the
> > project. I will try to post screenshots later this evening.
> 
> I was thinking about the earlier plans to obsolete reportlab's PDF
> plugin and the PS plugin. Now that we have a working gnome-print  
> plugin, I'm starting to doubt whether we should remove reportlab and  
> PS, even when LPRDoc becomes production quality in the future.
> 
> The reason is that, being fully internationalized, gnome-print embeds  
> the fonts within PS/PDF. This is about the only choice for non-latin  
> output, but is a huge overhead for latin-only contents.
> 
> As Frode Jemtland noticed, the latin-only PDFs created with reportlab  
> are a lot smaller than the ones created by LPRDoc.
> 
> So, the question for the near future is: whether we want to have one  
> way of creating PDFs (gnome-print) and pay the unnecessary overhead  
> when using latin text, or whether we leave an option for latin contents  
> to use reportlab plugin producing leaner PDFs. The reportlab is an  
> extra dependency, of course.
> 
> I personally would keep both. Since they're plugins, not having the  
> appropriate backend (reportlab or gnomeprint)  would rule out using the  
> corresponding plugin. That way the users can always choose the backend  
> fitting their needs.
> 
> As always, the trade-off is between the choice versus user-intuitive  
> setup. With too many choices things quickly become confusing,  
> especially for the new users.
> 
> What are the thoughts about the PDF creation in the future gramps?

Hmm. I seem to be the only one with that problem, but if I can't make A0
pdf's with gnome-print, I will truly miss the reportlab plugin.

<optimistic>
Or are you maybe doing progress with that? :)
</optimistic>

Best regards,
Stian

On Mon, 2004-03-22 at 11:14, Stian Jordet wrote:
> man, 22.03.2004 kl. 18.46 skrev Alex Roitman:=20
> > What are the thoughts about the PDF creation in the future gramps?
>=20
> Hmm. I seem to be the only one with that problem, but if I can't make A0
> pdf's with gnome-print, I will truly miss the reportlab plugin.
>=20
> <optimistic>
> Or are you maybe doing progress with that? :)
> </optimistic>

Not really much progress here. But there seem to be no good reason to
drop support for reportlab right now.

Well, I'm not being 100% true here :-) There's a reason for dropping
reportlab: it's table support is only for rectangular table grid. in
other words, cells spanning two columns are not supported. One needs to
either work around with nested tables, or not use their table support
and just reproduce the same thing that is done in gnome-print plugin.

But all in all, the reportlab is here to stay for quite some time. I
also thinks it's wise to support it, simply because for space-conscious
latin-only users it offers a huge savings in file size, because of not
embedding the fonts.

Alex

--=20
Alexander Roitman   http://ebner.neuroscience.umn.edu/people/alex.html
Dept. of Neuroscience, Lions Research Building
2001 6th Street SE, Minneapolis, MN  55455
Tel (612) 625-7566   FAX (612) 626-9201