Talk:Summer of Code/2009/Print Support

Looks pretty good. A couple of quick questions, while it is still unfinished:

• Why do you do the PDF conversion on the server? Shouldn't the student be able to see a WYSIWYG version, margins and all?

• Is there a way for a student to cancel a request?

• At the moment, Sugar opens files by mime type, and each activity handles its own mime type(s). If you save a pdf to journal to be opened by the "send to server" activity, it would actually be opened by Read. Would you plan to modify sugar to have an "open with" metadata to cue it to open with your print activity? Or would you find some other workaround?

Homunq 03:01, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

• Thing is we don't technically do a pdf conversion, CUPS comes with an emulator of the print engine, and prints to the PDF (cups-pdf

 modules to be specific to create a virtual printer). And we do this 
 because we would like for the teacher to review it. 
 The pdf is stored in a web folder on the server, and through moodle the teacher goes through them (we provide a webpage), and 
 approves the ones he thinks appropriate for printing.
 I explained it my   explanation
 The outcome of my second draft (beta) was that students should be provided as minimal functionality as possible. 
 They shouldn't be given too much flexibility or options. And... you get  
 WYSIWYG only as we  send the files directly from the journal.

• Yep, student can cancel his request, I forgot adding it. With The function cupsCancelJob() the student can cancel the job before his

  request goes to server (or before it can be printed to pdf).
  But after actually entering the web folder, It would become a bit complex. I would have to do this:
  1) we would send in a query with the name of the file and a .pdf extension
  2) if that file exists on web folder delete, otherwise do nothing
  3) send suitable message back

• No, no. There is ABSOLUTELY no need to interact with sugar activities, in the cups folder we have a file with the list of mime types

  accepted. We would also append the server supported CUPS Mimes to 
  the clients CUPS.
  IF the mime type exists in cups mime.type , we are all good to do printing from journal. (that is why we require step 1)
  There is no reason to read the file, the server handles the necessary post script conversions!

IwikiwI