print preview

[Bug Importer]

Hello,

Concerning pre-printing,
two necessary features are:
- displaying printer boundaries (OpenOffice has and it
is useful to know that your drawing is in the printable
area - it is known that every priter has its own
boundaries)

- print preview - it also help to see the layout before
printing (and it should be related to the above
feature)

[Printer boundaries is covered by bug 170758, this bug will focus on print preview only.]

[Msdobrescu (msdobrescu)]

btw, my mail is <email address hidden>
sorry

[Molumen (molumen)]

Agreed, this could be very useful.

This function could be named "show printable area" and could
be located in the "view" menu.

Also, this should be linked to a selected printer. I mean if
I select a printer among others installed, the "show
printable area" function should reflect the change.

Mo.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

From duplicate bug 170408:

If one can do a query of the current printers printable
area, I don't think this should be a difficult task.

CUPS Programming Manual: http://www.cups.org/spm.html

I found out how to get in CUPS documentation:

#include <cups/ppd.h>

...

ppd_file_t *ppd;
ppd_size_t *size;
float width;
float length;

...

size = ppdPageSize(ppd, "size");
width = ppdPageWidth(ppd, "size");
length = ppdPageLength(ppd, "size");

[Dov Grobgeld (dov-grobgeld)]

I related use case, though not necessarily related to printing, would be to be able to "view" the final page without any editing buttons. This is useful e.g. to display a static image on the screen, or perhaps in order to display slides. I think it is a shame that after building the artwork in InkScape, it is not possible to view the result (without all the editing buttons).

[Zackery (mor7al-com)]

I also am of the opinion a direct "Print Preview" option would be a nice addition to Inkscape. Linux distributions are gaining popularity. I personally run a copy of Xubuntu which is extremely light weight. On a laptop that gets about 3-4 hours of battery life while running Windows 7, I get 6 - 8 hours of battery life running Xubuntu. The main reason I have turned to a Linux distribution over Windows is its ease of use in the terminal. (And I cannot justify the $$$ on a Mac right now. Not when Linux does a beautiful job.) I am a web developer and it is much easier to run tasks from the terminal than it is to fight with the Windows command prompt. As most users know, the Adobe suite is not Linux compatible. Not to mention over-priced. Thus, Inkscape has become on my new go-to programs for vector art. I am currently redeveloping my resume in Inkscape. (YES! I know Inkscape is not a word processor. I have my reasons.) The only way I have really found to see what my document is going to look like at the end of project (with any certainty) is to save it as a PDF document and then view the PDF. Perhaps it is just my lack of trust in WYSIWYG (In case there are any new-to-the-game Inkscapers out there: "What You See Is What You Get") applications in general, but I would like to see the end results before committing to a print and then being surprised by mis-aligned content or something of that nature. If you do find yourself trying this, I recommend at least 200 ppi (really 300. But if file size is an issue, 200 would be OK.) To put this in perspective, screen dpi is typically 72 ppi (points per inch. Also call DPI or Dots Per Inch. Basically how much information is passed into each inch of the media. Physical prints really be 300 ppi but you can get a decent print with 200 ppi of the document is a text heavy and not so rich image media intense.)

Thanks for reading my long comment. If anybody out there would like to sound board, please contact me! Always looking for new developers.

Thanks, Inkscape! Big Fan! Keep up the good work! Looking forward to Inkscape's future!

Zackery G!

[Erick Rocha Amorim (erochaamorim)]

Inkscape would be even greater with a print preview!

[grey tomorrow (gtomorrow)]

Closing because INVALID: Fix Released with caveats.

Please see:
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/413
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/1734
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues/1669

If you feel this issue has been unjustly closed, please feel free to open a new issue at https://inkscape.org/report . Thank you.

Closed by: https://gitlab.com/greytomorrow