Bug 93404

Summary: schedule large print runs as smaller jobs
Product: [Unmaintained] kdeprint Reporter: kirun <bugs_kde>
Component: generalAssignee: KDEPrint Devel Mailinglist <kde-print-devel>
Status: CLOSED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: jlayt
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: openSUSE   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description kirun 2004-11-16 23:18:20 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.2.1)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs
OS:                Linux

When printing to a shared printer, doing large print runs can be a problem because other users of the printer do not appreciate being held up.

The solution is to split the print run into smaller jobs, say, printing 100 in runs of 20. Leaving some time between sending the prints allows other jobs to get through.

While this can be done manually, an automatic system would be nice.

This would add another line in the "advanced options" tab of kprinter, under the scheduler. A number of batches would need to be selected, along with how they are to be scheduled, plus a time gap between the batches.

To ease estimates of how long jobs will take, an additional facility could be provided to watch the print queue and only add new jobs after the old ones have finished (although I suspect this could be more trouble than it's worth).
Comment 1 Cristian Tibirna 2005-08-22 21:52:09 UTC 
UNCONFIRMED (batch reassigning messed this)
Comment 2 Kurt Pfeifle 2007-01-09 00:20:23 UTC 
Closing this bug as WONTFIX.

kirun,

from all I know about everyday life printing life in office and professional environments, this is nowhere, under no OS implemented, and would not be used by many people (I'm working in that kinda industry).

If you are in an office with a shared printer, where "other users of the printer do not appreciate being held up", you'll have to restrain yourself and do it manually  :-)

Also, there are other options to help you being kind to your colleagues:

 (a) decrease the job priority to 49 or lower (CUPS job priorities can be 
     rated 1-100, with defaulting to 50). This will make your own job print 
     only after all the other jobs in the queue are finished. Even if your job 
     is currently lined up as 3rd, and the last one, as soon as one more job
     gets submitted it will overtake yours and take the 3rd place. Yours will
     only print when the queue is empty of higher prioritized jobs. But once
     it prints, it will do so un-interrupted.

 (b) set a scheduled time for longer jobs. I'm sure you already discovered 
     the way you can set it for "after office hours".

 (c) limit the maximum pages that are accepted by CUPS (see "quotas", search
     http://printing.kde.org/ for tutorials and articles and FAQs.
     submitted it will overtake you "49-priority" job.

More reasons: an automatic system would...

 (a) ...be rather complicated to implement, with very few users using it, 
 (b) ...and more users now complaining due to them not being able to print
        un-interruptedly

What you suggest as "additional facility could be provided to watch the print queue and only add new jobs after the old ones have finished" is very much what the "print with reduced priority" achieves (though it immediately adds to the print queue, but re-queues according to the given job priority, not just the time when the job was submitted).

----
(If you still need that "automatic splitting of large jobs" for your
environment, send me a private mail, and I'll send you a quote about my rates;
I'd implement it as a Bash script that runs as a CUPS backend filter to throttle the jobs as you wish  ;-)   ).

Cheers,
Kurt
Comment 3 John Layt 2008-12-31 17:43:10 UTC 
Closing old Resolved status bug.