Inkscape does not use gnome print dialog

[Corey Burger]

Inkscape has an option at compile time --with-gnome-print that changes the
default inkscape print dialog to the gnome default one. There may be some loss
of functionality with this, as the current print dialog allows printing to
bitmap. However, there is also an export feature, which is more powerful and
appears to cover the same functionality.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Daniel, any opinion on that? Do you use inskcape?

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Corey: the bug does seem to matter to you - have you tried both and do you think
you can speak for more people than you in suggesting something? Both solutions
seem to have pros and cons, so I suppose we should discuss the options and if we
change, we should have a good reason to divert from the upstream default. So
no, Séb, I just use it for testing reasons, and I never ever touched the
printing facilities, I have no clue about it. Sorry.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

we will change that after 5.10

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

I suspect this got buried -- Inkspace still doesn't use the right dialog

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Scott, we use "Fix Commited" as "Pending Upload" to notice what to change with next upload, what is the point to change that?

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

You'd marked it as "Change after 5.10" and hadn't done so -- given Malone doesn't show Fix Committed bugs by default, I'd unhidden it again for you

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

I tried it, but when I click it, it says "lpr: error - no default destination available." - guess we won't ship it with gnomeprint. :-/

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

Still present in Inkscape 0.44-1ubuntu1 on Edgy.

I dont know how aware the community is, and if enough are for a representative vote.

My opinion would be that since inkscape sits on top of GTK (and not Qt or some other toolkit), and since I strongly feel that consistency in Ubuntu is a very desirable feature, then it probably should be changed.

The best way to go about this (IMHO) may be that the upstream should be gently encouraged to use the default gnome dialog, and that the ubuntu maintainers showcase it working in Ubuntu.

[dorphichinfa (dorphichinfa-deactivatedaccount)]

Still in Edgy?

This IS a severe problem, because it practically means you can't print with Inkscape, since you surely can't expect you're average user to know how to use that rediculous print dialogue. Ubuntu's supposed to be usable for normal people.

This should be marked as Medium importance.

Ubuntu devels need to find out how to get --with-gnome-print working or otherwise leave yet another critical usability problem go unsolved.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Jasper: Please try to maintain a respectful atmosphere - ranting is of no use.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Ok, I tried to build it with gnome-print again:
 * it prints fine
 * but offers no dialog - it directly prints.

This should be forwarded upstream.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

The --with-gnome-print option is known to be broken (afaik it's never worked properly in Inkscape). The issue had been tracked to problems in gtk itself.

However, gtk-2.10 includes a new print dialog that the gtk developers say will work much better. I haven't tested this yet and don't know of anyone who has tried hooking it up. So that would be the next step.

We are upgrading the dependency version for Inkscape 0.45 from gtk-2.4 to gtk-2.8. Going to 2.10 is a large jump for inkscape since some platforms don't yet have it, but we don't know of any issues that would prevent use of 2.10 on a distro-specific basis.

Once Inkscape moves to gtk-2.10, implementing that print dialog will be a top priority. I estimate this will occur as part of the 0.46 release, probably some time in mid- to late-2006.

[Kees Cook (kees)]

This is available in upstream subversion now.

[Neilen Marais (neilenmarais)]

Any idea when this will hit a released version in Ubuntu? Feisty still has the old unfriendly printing dialog.

[Paul Bartell (paul-bartell)]

I agree, its a pain to print from inkscape on ubuntu. (I ended up going to a windows macine to print the thing because i couldent figure out how to use the thing, and i was out of time)

[Kees Cook (kees)]

This is available in the "Gutsy" release of Ubuntu, scheduled[1] for October 18th. If you want to try pre-release version of Gutsy, please try some of the "Tribe" releases[2]. Tribe 2 should be released shortly.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyReleaseSchedule
[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/tribe1

[Kees Cook (kees)]

Apologies, this will not be fixed in Gutsy -- no new release of Inkscape has happened.

[Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount)]

In hardy then?

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

Changing from "Fix Committed" to "Confirmed" to restore visibility, in the hopes that this increases the chance of a future solution. While it may need fixing upstream, and the Ubuntu work may be done, having it marked "Fix Committed" over 4 releases seems an odd status.

[Kees Cook (kees)]

This is fixed -- latest upstream is in Hardy.

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

Inkscape has moved to launchpad, so the link to the upstream bug is incorrect. Its new URL is: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/170727, and, as Kees notes, it is marked fix-released...