"System settings>Printing" interface has problems
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
system-config-printer (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
Low
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
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-
ProcVersionSign
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
PackageArchitec
Papersize: letter
PpdFiles:
Coconut: Xerox WorkCentre 7345 Foomatic/Postscript
HP-Officejet-
Pear: Xerox WorkCentre 7345 Foomatic/Postscript
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=
SourcePackage: system-
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.
dmi.board.name: Portable PC
dmi.board.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.board.version: Version A0
dmi.chassis.
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.chassis.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnTOSHIBA:
dmi.product.name: PORTEGE Z835
dmi.product.
dmi.sys.vendor: TOSHIBA
Changed in system-config-printer (Ubuntu): | |
importance: | Undecided → Low |
description: | updated |
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.