Auto print holds and transit slips on checkin doesn't auto print

[Jason Boyer]

In 2.0, hold slips and transit slips don't auto print, regardless of the "Auto Print ...." setting in the circulation modifiers menu. Looking around, the auto_print var is consulted to make a couple of decisions, but never to actually show or hide the Print dialog. The included patch addresses that.

[Jason Etheridge (phasefx)]

Jason, I recently did something different to address this:

rel_2_0: http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/changeset/20331
rel_2_1: http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/changeset/20329
trunk: http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/changeset/20327

This adds a Printer Prompt checkbox to control the behavior (and Auto-Print simply controls the Print / Do-Not-Print dialog in this context).

I'm inclined to keep it like this, but can be swayed.

-- Jason

[Jason Boyer (jasonb-myjclibrary)]

Is there a user benefit to having two options when there used to be one before? If nothing else, using that method makes the Auto print... option somewhat misleading because you may still have to choose the printer, where before ("Before" for us is 1.6, I don't know when this changed exactly) it controlled both dialogs. If there are going to be 2 separate controls going forward they might make more sense with names like "Prompt to print slips" and "Prompt for Printer" and just leaving the word Auto out of it, since only 1 of 4 combinations of checked/unchecked will result in "automatic" printing.

Does all of that make sense? I'm coming from the point of view that fewer options are better. There are already 6 toggle settings, 4 menus (with 3 different visual styles and 100+ selections), 2 regular buttons, and a date picker (which is 3 controls itself) just on the checkin page. I know devs can all keep that straight with a little effort, but circ desks are run by an enormous cross section of users, some of which may be overwhelmed by all of their options.

[Jason Etheridge (phasefx)]

> I'm coming from the point of view that fewer options are better.

Yeah, that's definitely one of the forces out there. Another is
consistency, and the various Auto-Print labels are horribly
inconsistent with how they behave in different interfaces, so I have
an itch to move in the direction that the billing interface went,
where you have explicit and better labeled options (so I'm with you on
re-wording things if we keep this stuff), perhaps all hidden under a
single Print Options menu.

--
Jason

[Mike Rylander (mrylander)]

Re: Is there a user benefit to having two options when there used to be one before?

The term "Auto print" has always been misleading, or at least ambiguous. IMO, changing that to read "Always print" would be more correct. The new element Jason added is about suppressing the printer selection prompt, which is not /only/ about the auto-ish printing, but also "reprint last" IIUC.

[Jason Boyer (jasonb-myjclibrary)]

I wasn't aware that the print last function paid any attention to that (or
any) setting. That's not a bad reason to have it separated; maybe in time
these can be gathered up into a single "Prompt for Printer" setting instead
of having several spread around.

I'll take a pass on this and see about getting the 20331 patch in use here.