On 10/25/06, Paul Davis <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 2006-10-25 at 13:31 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: > > no, no. i am talking about being in a file browser, not in a document > > editor. lets say i find foo.txt or bar.png or baz.pdf and i want to > > print it. what do i do? > > > > because in a command line environment i don't have to start up an > > editor, i just type "lpr foo.txt". it seems to me that this *must* be > > possible from the GUI equivalent, but in GNOME at least i cannot find > > it. > > > > Do you mean something like the Windows 'Run' command? I don't think > Gnome has that, or I've never seen it. Of course Gnome does have a > terminal to instead of running the command it's open the terminal and > run the command. Not a big deal really. > > I'm sure there is a finer point here? actually, no. i am not talking about a "Run command" style interface. i am simply amazed that whenever i go to show my wife or kids a document that they should print but that needs no editing (e.g. my wife's resume, a picture one of them took, etc etc), neither i nor they can find anyway to do so without going into a heavyweight app and then doing the usual File->Print method.
OK - I completely understand and completely agree. However I think the 'printing in Linux' problem seems to go so far beyond the desktop environment it's scary. Printing is jsut damnably hard in Linux no matter how you try it. I have printers all around the house. With a lot of work I can get one or two of them to be available to different machines, but we run into formatting issues. The HP printer attached to this AMD64 Gentoo box gives different results with the same document printed from my wife's box or my son's box or even printed from here.
coming from a command line background, it seems ridiculous that the file managers/browsers have all omitted to leverage the power of lpr and its filter system.
I agree. I'm sure it could be easier and certainly more intuitive. - Mark
