Re: is xprint still used by mozilla, etc?
Joey Hess wrote:
>
> Otavio Salvador wrote:
> > Not really. Like you did remember, exist some language that need it
> > for printing and in this case i think it should be included.
>
> What languages (and why)?
>
Xprint provides two (related) services, currently made use of by the mozillas and others.
These are improvements in printing compared to the results of the default mozilla postscript driver
(identified in the mozilla printing dialog as "Postscript/*"):
1) subtle improvements over general layout on the printed page. For instance, some CSS style settings
were being ignored by the default driver, but handled by Xprint. Also Xprint can handle MathML.
I haven't followed this advantage carefully, mind you, so maybe the default driver has improved.
2) ability to print non-latin text (russian, thai, hebrew, etc etc etc). This is the killer app for me,
the specific reason why I introduced Xprint into Debian in the first place. You can see for yourself
by printing www.rol.ru or www.dailynews.co.th from a mozilla with and without Xprint. Keith said Xprint
is increasingly irrelevant, but I'm not aware how this language issue can be satisfactorily solved
without Xprint.
The dependency on Xprint was added to the mozillas mainly because of reason 2, I believe.
Takuo KITAME is, after all, Japanese.
As I wrote to bug #298954, current (reverse) dependencies on Xprint are:
Depends: x-window-system
Recommends: mozilla-thunderbird
Suggests: mozilla-firefox, mozilla-browser
I'm not sure why thunderbird recommends: rather than suggests: Xprint -
possibly an oversight on behalf of the thunderbird maintainer, or maybe
he saw it as the best way to allow the printing of non-latin emails.
Alexander can speak for himself if he truly prefers Recommends: over
Suggests.
The desktop task depends on x-window-system-core, not x-window-system,
and therefore shouldn't be hauling in Xprint.
With regards to the priority of the debconf question, as discussed in
bug #298954, I'm happy to lower the priority.
With regards to general desktop dependencies, it's fair enough for the
non-latin locales to include their own dependency on Xprint, I think.
Though I like to believe Xprint does no harm to others. Even when it is
installed, the default postscript driver is still there in the mozilla
print dialog, available for use.
Drew
p.s. The lastest upload of Xprint is stalled in the NEW queue after
renaming the packages (the -xprintorg suffix is no longer required. A
dummy package is supplied to handle the dependencies but I'd like to
have them updated). Can I beg on my heels for the ftpmasters to push it
through? Then I can deal with the priority of the debconf question.
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