Printing et al.

[Peter Krenesky]

Greg Smith (gregmsmi) wrote:
> Lastly, is the teacher up to doing it this way (we can translate if
> needed)?
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Enabling_CUPS
>
> Once the printer is installed you're close but "lpr -P fooprinter
> foodoc.ps" will need a path to the file and they may not be comfortable
> with the prompt.
>
>   
That documentation was intended more as proof that you could print and 
for developers who wanted to add print support to an activity. 

Manual configuration of CUPs requires some knowledge of it.  Teachers 
can't be expected to manually configure cups.  In fact when I tested it 
i cheated and copied printers.conf from my workstation.

Currently there are no activities that convert files to a printable 
format (ps/pdf).  The teachers won't be able to print this way even if 
they had their printer configured.

> Pardon my ignorance but how hard is it to create a mini-activity in the
> Sugar GUI that allows you to run a shell script? May need the ability to
> enter a file name or other arguments. Even better would be to drag and
> drop a file from the Journal on the print activity and away it goes.
> That's my 2 cents on design but let's hear from the teacher.
>   
Printing needs to be implemented on a per-activity basis.  Translating 
what you see on the screen to a printable format will be different for 
each file type.