[cairo] psnup & Co.

[Michael Sweet]

Lutz Müller wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 15:10 -0500, Michael Sweet wrote:
>> Lutz Müller wrote:
>>> I haven't gotten any feedback on a feature request posted on
>>> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5762, therefore I am doing
>>> a bit of marketing on this mailing list for it :-)
>>>
>>> I've written a surface that lets you print multiple pages on 1 page
>>> (like psnup), print the pages in reverse order etc. This surface will
>>> make the implementation of print dialogs offering those features very
>>> easy.
>> Since this functionality is already provided by CUPS, it probably
>> is not needed for a print dialog, however I can see how this would
>> be useful for certain apps when producing PDFs for review, etc.
> 
> CUPS is very limited in this respect. The doc [1] states that "CUPS
> supports 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, and 16-Up formats". With the new transform
> surface, you can construct the best n for a given paper size (i.e.
> 3-up). You can print as many pages as you like on one page (think of 32
> pictures on 1 page). 
> 
> In addition, you can do 1/n-up to generate posters. This feature is
> missing in pretty much every environment.

CUPS supports this, at least for images (scaling=n00).

That said, I stand by my original comment: your surface will be
useful for certain applications, however for many common applications
(think: web browser, text editor, etc.) the additional functionality
is probably not required or desired.

Both methods will work with CUPS, but the CUPS-based N-up and 1/N
options leave the original document in a form that can be reprinted
with different options without re-running the application.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com