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Summer of Code/2009/Print Support (view source)
Revision as of 10:51, 30 March 2009
, 10:51, 30 March 2009→About your project
:'''1)''' (this is no way related to abiword's print to pdf ability)
:'''1)''' (this is no way related to abiword's print to pdf ability)
:The right click menu of an item in the journal will have a new option, i.e. send for network print. When clicked, the item will be sent to a local virtual CUPS-PDF printer for PDF conversion, and the pdf will have metadata attached stating its details.The PDF can be marked for printing or unmarked for printing.(That is by again right clicking on the parent journal item and clicking cancel) We will be using moodle as our interface for sending print requests on the network. The interface will have a user page and a teacher page. The page will have a report of his print jobs and a status report of his live jobs. And the ability to put 3 live jobs on queue. The no of upload slots will be dynamically updated according to his live jobs pending for teacher's approval. And the number of free slots will automatically be filled up by the browser with the to print PDFs. And then these objects can be sent to the moodle web folder.
:The right click menu of an item in the journal will have a new option, i.e. send for network printing. When clicked, the item will be sent to a local virtual CUPS-PDF printer for PDF conversion, and the pdf will have metadata attached stating its details (this wont be visible to the user).The object is then said to be marked for printing and can be unmarked for printing.(That is by again right clicking on the parent journal item and clicking cancel for network printing).
:Also a similar button will be provided for saving to PDF. Which will have a PDF file of the same in journal;the pdf will be tangible.
:We will be using moodle as our interface for sending print requests on the network. The interface will have a user page and a teacher page. The page will have a report of his print jobs and a status report of his live jobs. And the ability to put 3 live jobs on queue. The no of upload slots will be dynamically updated according to his live jobs pending for teacher's approval. And the number of free slots will automatically be filled up by the browser with the to print PDFs. And then these objects can be sent to the moodle web folder.
:(The 2nd would be implementing queuing and teacher review, reject approve facilities
:(The 2nd would be implementing queuing and teacher review, reject approve facilities
:( The 3rd usb printing on demand!)
:( The 3rd usb printing on demand!)
:'''3)''' The no School Server case. The simple solution to this case is to print directly through usb. And this won't be counter productive to the idea of teacher moderated printing, as the printer won't be available for just anyone; this is only a quick alternative to the 'save to portable drive and do the printing' method.
:'''3)''' The no School Server case. The simple solution to this case is to print directly through usb. And this won't be counter productive to the idea of teacher :moderated printing, as the printer won't be available for just anyone; this is only a quick alternative to the 'save to portable drive and do the printing' method.
:'''In-Depth analysis:'''
:'''In-Depth analysis:'''
:for step-1, We use CUPS. The API has a nice array of functions, one of which is to get the printer's name (the cups-pdf virtual printer).( Since we know the name is CUPS-PDF, we can check it) and print our file as a PDF in the journal. For the sake of our python convenience we will be using a python wrapper to cups, pycups. The print objects will have metadata attached to them through the sugar datastore API.
:for step-1, We use CUPS. The API has a nice array of functions, one of which is to get the printer's name (the cups-pdf virtual printer).( Since we know the name is CUPS-PDF, we can check it) and print our file as a PDF in the datastore. Which is pretty much the same for saving as PDF, or send for network printing.
:For the sake of our python convenience we will be using a python wrapper to cups, pycups. The print objects will have metadata attached to them through the sugar datastore API.
:For the second part of it when ever the print page url is found, we make browse communicate with the moodle print queue through xmlrpc get the details, and upload to that many slots (as the number of slots will also be dependent on the print queue) This would essentially mean a rainbow hack so that browse can communicate with journal without a dialog (Or we bypass the dialog automatically). The execution part of this will take place dynamically as soon as the user requests the print page.
:For the second part of it when ever the print page url is found, we make browse communicate with the moodle print queue through xmlrpc get the details, and upload to that many slots (as the number of slots will also be dependent on the print queue) This would essentially mean a rainbow hack so that browse can communicate with journal without a dialog (Or we bypass the dialog automatically). The execution part of this will take place dynamically as soon as the user requests the print page.
:And also, once the pdf is read, it is destroyed.
:And also, once the pdf is read, it is destroyed.