Bug 99939

Summary: difficult to control whether printout is colour or greyscale
Product: [Unmaintained] kdeprint Reporter: David Anderson <david>
Component: generalAssignee: KDEPrint Devel Mailinglist <kde-print-devel>
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED    
Severity: wishlist CC: jlayt
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: RedHat Enterprise Linux   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: Where my "colour on/off" option is
Where I think the option should be

Description David Anderson 2005-02-21 17:38:16 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.3.2)
Installed from:    RedHat RPMs
OS:                Linux

I have an HP 2550 colour laserjet. It is installed with a manufacturer-supplied PPD in CUPS.

Sometimes I print in colour, sometimes in black and white. The setting to do this is buried a long way deep.

From the print dialogue, I have to do:
1. Press "Properties" button
2. Move into "Driver Settings" tab
3. Find "Color Options" cluster of options
4. Find "Print Color as Gray" option. Turn on/off.

Just as "paper size" and "orientation" are basic options that are made easy to access, so I think this one should be too. Please see attached screenshots.
Comment 1 David Anderson 2005-02-21 17:44:03 UTC 
Created attachment 9755 [details]
Where my "colour on/off" option is
Comment 2 David Anderson 2005-02-21 17:44:39 UTC 
Created attachment 9756 [details]
Where I think the option should be
Comment 3 Michael Goffioul 2005-02-22 09:11:43 UTC 
I know the problem, but the fact is that this is not easy to implement. Indeed, there's is no standard way to specify at driver-level how to print in color or in grayscale: this is printer-specific and can be different for each and every printer. However, there's another possibility, so I'll keep this bug report open.

Michael.
Comment 4 David Anderson 2005-02-23 11:23:36 UTC 
I guessed it would probably be printer-specific.
However, is it really too hackish to maintain a list of the different CUPS options that can potentially contain this option?

I'd imagine the code logic working like this:

* Search for driver option matching list: /^(Colou?r Options/Print Colou?r as Gray|Print Colou?r|Colou?r)$/
* If match found, provide a "Print Colour" option in the dialogue. If not, don't.

With this approach, if no option is found, then nothing's lost - we just get the dialogue as it presently is, and users will have to go into the CUPS options. However, if the driver is found, we get it presented more prominently. There's no loss for the driver options that aren't matched, but gain when they are. It's an elegant solution.
Comment 5 Michael Goffioul 2005-02-23 11:34:13 UTC 
It's not only about the option name, but also the option values name. Hardcoding some predefined names will fail in many situations and I'll get tons of bug reports telling me that this prominently option is not enabled or doesn't work while they have a color printer.
The other possibility I was talking about is at application-level: it is possible the tell the app to generate grayscale PostScript data, this is used for example when printing to a PS file.

Michael.
Comment 6 David Anderson 2005-03-07 14:54:07 UTC 
Scribus has an option like that... in effect then I have to monitor two options: "Print as Colour" (Scribus) and "Print Colour as Grey" (CUPS). I then have to make sure that they're both on the right setting to get colour. It's more troublesome.
The solution would be for me to just have "Print Colour as Grey" (CUPS) permanently off, but KDE doesn't have the application-level option yet and I don't want KDE to be printing colour by default (it's expensive!).
It might be a problem for new users - it would be confusing if there was a prominent KDE option that was overridden by a fairly hidden CUPS one.
Comment 7 John Layt 2011-05-27 17:57:50 UTC 
KDEPrint is obsolete, unmaintained and will never be revived.  Closing all open bugs.