Common Print Dialog

IMPORTANT: This repo is now just a proof-of-work for my participation in Google Summer of Code 2017. For all other purposes this repo can be thought of as deprecated in favor of a new version CPDv2 which can be found here

This repository was created as a part of my participation in the Google Summer of Code 2017 for the OpenPrinting division of The Linux Foundation.

Goal

The goal of the project is to build a Print Dialog in Qt in order to make the process of printing simple and uniform across multiple platforms and devices. The project idea can be found here: https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/gsoc/google-summer-code-2017-openprinting-projects

Project Structure

The project consists of two major parts:

1. Frontend : This team builds an UI using Qt and integrates the backend APIs with the frontend. The dialog started as a separate application, however, it is planned to replace the existing QPrintDialog with the Common Print Dialog being built.

   Students :

   • Anshul Gupta - Git repo
   • Me

   Mentor :

   • Dongxu Li - dongxuli2011@gmail.com

2. Backend APIs (CUPS, IPP, Google Cloud Print) : This team builds APIs for the dialog using CUPS and Google Cloud Print. Their APIs can be found here and here.

Dependencies

• poppler-qt5

  Ubuntu/Debian

  sudo apt-get install libpoppler-qt5-dev

• CUPS

  Ubuntu/Debian

  sudo apt-get install cups libcups2-dev

• libglib

  Ubuntu/Debian

  sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev

• Qt 5.7

  https://www.qt.io/download-open-source/ or

  Ubuntu/Debian

  sudo apt-get install qt5-default qtdeclarative5-dev qml-module-qtquick-controls qml-module-qtquick-controls2 qml-module-qtquick-templates2 qml-module-qtquick-dialogs

Build

1. Download and install the APIs mentioned above
2. If you have Qt Creator installed, you can open the project from Qt Creator and run it. If you want to build the code manually, follow these instructions:

Note: The name of the printer comes from the other part of the dialog(built by Anshul), so in my part, the value is hardcoded in main.qml and advanced.qml files as a property printer_name. To test my part of the dialog, please change the value "Xerox_Placeholder" to one that matches the printer you want to test with.

# Get the code

someDirectory$ git clone https://github.com/rithvikp1998/cpd.git
someDirectory$ cd cpd

# Build project

someDirectory/cpd$ mkdir build; cd build
someDirectory/cpd/build$ qmake ../cpd.pro; make
someDirectory/cpd/build$ sudo cp ../libs/libcpd.so.1 /usr/lib/

# Get the test application
someDirectory/cpd/build$ cd ../..
someDirectory$ git clone https://github.com/rithvikp1998/printTest; cd printTest
someDirectory/printTest$ mkdir build; cd build
someDirectory/printTest/build$ qmake ../printTest.pro; make

# Run the test application which uses the CPD library
someDirectory/printTest/build$ ./printTest

TODO

1. The CUPS API doesn't get the more advanced options like Contrast, Brightness, Color Balance etc. The dialog has a tab name "Advanced" which has static dropdowns to indicate these options but only the "Resolution" dropdown has backend support while the rest don't. These dropdowns will get the backend support as soon as it is provided by the CUPS API

2. Qt uses a QPrinter class for all the printing operations. To integrate this dialog with the Qt library itself, it is preferable that the dialog use a similar approach too, so that the existing developers and applications need not modify much of their code.

Post GSoC

1. The backend APIs have been officially released by OpenPrinting and can be found at https://github.com/OpenPrinting. More specifically, the cpdb-libs, cpdb-backend-cups, cpdb-backend-gcp are the relevant repos for this project.

2. To keep up with the changes in the backend APIs and test new ideas and features in the dialog, a separate branch named postGSoC has been created. Please note that the code in this branch is highly dynamic and probably not optimized well. I'll try to keep it as clean as possible and merge more permanent code into the master branch.