Printing subsystem

These are the notes I've taken away from examining the printing subsystem. -Kees 2004-04-17

Printing in Inkscape depends on three components:

1. Configuration -- destination, page size, orientation, etc is selected, the "Print" dialog
2. Output -- DOM is coverted into a some kind of output, like PostScript
3. Delivery -- "Output" is delivered to the selected destination

GnomePrint will let us do our own "Output" stage. They also have their own. Inkscape's native PS output, however, uses raw PS writing, rather than generic "moveto" kinds of actions, which is how GnomePrint is set up to be called.

My remaining questions:

• Will GnomePrint apply "Configuration" selections (page size, orientation) to application-generated Output correctly? It does not, however, these parameters are available during the "Output" stage, since they are collected during the "Configuration" stage. See "example_11.c" that comes with libgnomeprintui2.2.