Re: gEDA-user: pcb printing

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

> 1)  is this actually a useful enough feature for people to warrant 
> putting any time into it?  One thing we would probably be able to do 
> better than now is support layer transparency.

Yes, I think it is worthwhile.

I don't what level you'd define layer transparency at, but this needs to
be solved for the GL HID too.

On some levels it is a preference which lives with colours, on others,
it is something which the GUI ought to be able to control dynamically
depending on which layer / tools are selected. (Noting how thin-draw /
translucent draw polygons can provide increased usability whilst
editing).

> 2) does it make sense, and I think it probably does, for this to be a 
> cairo HID and that HID depends on gtk (not the gtk HID, but the gtk 
> libraries) to provide the print dialogs.  The advantage of using the gtk 
> print dialogs is they are there, they work on linux and win32, and we 
> don't have to maintain our own.

I'd turn it on its head. Let the HID produce the cairo_t to render into,
and keep the cairo shared code as cairo only. Any creation of backend
specific surfaces would have to be done by the HID.

> 3) can we do a layering sort of thing where we have a cairo HID that 
> does not use gtk at all and then in the gtk HID, we can implement a call 
> to the gtk print dialog and in the lesstif HID we somehow call the cairo 
> HID to generate postscript to a file or lpr or pdf to a file?

Rather just teach the common .ps / .eps exporter to use cairo as a
backend? Doesn't the lpr exporter use the .ps exporter internally?

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)



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