Hacking LO print dialog

[Christian Lohmaier]

Hi Jim, *,

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Jim Cobley <jimc at priorycomputers.com> wrote:
> Not so strange to miss out pages when printing.

Again missing the point. It is not about choosing a print range.

> Also - if I have letters to print that take more than 1 page I will want to
> print, say, page 1 in the upper tray (because that has headed paper on the
> current printer) and the rest on the lower tray.

Yes, so configure your first page to use the one with the headed
paper, and the next with the blank paper. So you don't have to
configure this manually in the print dialog each time.

And also answering to your other mail that you only sent to me, not to the list:

You *CAN* set the paper tray already.

My point is: I don't see the need to configure *different* page trays
for different page-ranges *in the same printjob/in the print dialog*

Instead if you want to print parts on different trays, just open the
print dialog two times, and print those parts separately.

Or if you / your department desperately needs it for whatever reason
(that nobody explained so far in a usecase, thus I stick with my view
of the world): create a small extension that offers this feature (page
range + paper tray) and that creates the print jobs for you, so you
don't have to open the print dialog twice.

> I could also want to print the first page on 1 printer and the rest on the
> second - OK I can do this with a page range in the Print GUI.

Or with page styles. And of course there is no other reason in the
print GUI apart from selecting a page-range. Even the proposal would
still use page ranges, just more of them. I say: This is useless for
99% of the users, thus I personally wouldn't even try to submit it for
inclusion. Instead I'd write a small extension that accepts the
page-range and tray as input and have that create print jobs.

Home users usually don't have printer with multiple trays / if they do
then it is usually one tray with photo-print/glossy paper and another
one with regular one (and thus won't mix papers in one single
document, so no use for that feature), and business users should work
with appropriate document templates where the paper-tray is already
configured within the document (the page styles), so no need for them
to manually configure the tray each time they want to print.

As you wrote about selecting a range to avoid waste - I get goosebumps
from the amount of wasted paper that would occur were they to manually
configure the trays each time they print.

For the cases where you want to print on different paper for whatever
reasons, you can just print the documents in parts.

For me it stays a very, very specific feature that would clutter the
dialog without providing benefit to the majority of users. An
extension, (and additional dialog that allows entering the desired
page ranges and tray that then triggers multiple separate print jobs
with the appropriate settings) is easier to implement, doesn't impact
other users, can be adjusted without having to wait for a new version
of LO, ...

But that's enough for this thread - it starts going in circles, so no
reply from me anymore.

ciao
Christian