If a printer has a problem (see first attachment) its icon has an alert symbol on it.
It is very hard to locate what the problem is.
Firstly if you double click on the printer, nothing happens - I would propose that the printer properties come up, as a solution to this.
Secondly, if you manually select Printer Properties (see attachment 2), there is no indication that anything is wrong. In the attachment you can see "Printer State: Idle -ready to print." as if nothing is wrong.
In fact I discovered purely by chance that the error messages are reported under the tab "Ink/toner levels", even though they may have nothing to do with ink and toner (as in this case). Worse yet, they are displayed in a text area that is less than one line high (in my case there were several messages, but scrolling doesn't work properly on a text area that is so small).
My recommendations: 1) Make double click on a printer bring up its properties. 2) Move the error messages to the initial tab, either merged with the "Printer state" field, or directly below. 3) Make the space for error messages larger, to accommodate at least one line, but preferably more.
(Extra suggestion moved from later reply:) An additional improvement would be to make the hover text for the printer (currently "Printer") the error message text, so that in my case just hovering over the printer icon would show "Printer out of paper", making location of the problem trivial.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: system-config-printer-common 1.3.8+20120201-0ubuntu8.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-25.40-generic 3.2.18
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-25-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Jun 18 15:47:19 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
MachineType: TOSHIBA PORTEGE Z835
PackageArchitecture: all
Papersize: letter
PpdFiles:
Coconut: Xerox WorkCentre 7345 Foomatic/Postscript
HP-Officejet-6500-E710n-z: HP Officejet 6500 e710n-z, hpcups 3.12.2
Pear: Xerox WorkCentre 7345 Foomatic/Postscript
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-25-generic root=UUID=234865dc-97a3-4cf3-9932-254dd6cd6b11 ro quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: system-config-printer
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-04-26 (52 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 10/19/2011
dmi.bios.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.bios.version: Version 1.30
dmi.board.asset.tag: 0000000000
dmi.board.name: Portable PC
dmi.board.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.board.version: Version A0
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: 0000000000
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.chassis.version: Version 1.0
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnTOSHIBA:bvrVersion1.30:bd10/19/2011:svnTOSHIBA:pnPORTEGEZ835:pvrPT224U-001001:rvnTOSHIBA:rnPortablePC:rvrVersionA0:cvnTOSHIBA:ct10:cvrVersion1.0:
dmi.product.name: PORTEGE Z835
dmi.product.version: PT224U-001001
dmi.sys.vendor: TOSHIBA
Actually, an additional improvement would be to make the hover text for the printer (currently "Printer") the error message text, so that in my case just hovering over the printer icon would show "Printer out of paper", making location of the problem trivial.