Hello,
I decided to take a simple usage case to illustrate a killer feature in Linux that would be fantastic if it only didn't suck in a few ways. I hope that this prompts the developers with the know-how to do this last bit of polishing needed and spark some discussion on delivering the best user experience to make this PDF generation/viewing/editing work-flow absolutely top-notch.
The application was chosen just because it generated a simple blend of text and vector graphics (and I actually tried to do this and email them to my family only to reinforce to them that Linux was a quirky pain when I was trying to illustrate to them the cool things that you could do with Linux out of the box)
Pasted from Tomboy Notes so I hope the formating comes out as something better than flame-bait:
*The Mission*:
• Print Multiple Sudoku puzzles as PDF files ∘ 10 puzzles with 2 per page • View them anywhere • Edit them
*Tools used*:
• gnome-games.i386 1:2.22.1.1-5.fc9 • cups-pdf.i386 2.4.7-1.fc9 • cairo.i386 1.6.4-1.fc9 • evince.i386 2.22.1.1-1.fc9 • AdobeReader_enu.i486 8.1.2-1 • inkscape.i386 0.46-2.fc9 • selinux-policy.noarch 3.3.1-55.fc9 (this will make sense later)
*Results*:
Printing with Cups ("Cups-PDF"): • Prints successfully ∘ good print format options ∘ just dumps it on the desktop with some default name ∘ cups-pdf setroubleshooter unhappiness ∘ see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=448652 • Displays correctly in Evince • Displays correctly in Adobe Reader • Imports incorrectly in Inkscape ∘ missing all text but at least lines are shown and editable after ungrouping ∘ see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=448654 • multiple of binary streams when viewed in text editor
Printing with Cairo ("Create a PDF document"): • Prints successfully ∘ more limited print format options ∘ can choose where the file goes and what it is called ∘ but file chooser is not obvious and keeps defaulting back to output.pdf in user's home directory • Displays correctly in Evince • Displays incorrectly in Adobe Reader ∘ missing bottom puzzle numbers and title in each page ∘ see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=441341 ∘ and upstream bug http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527954 • Imports beautifully in Inkscape ∘ ungrouped and editable text and lines • only one binary stream when viewed in text editor
Printing with Ideal Fictional Dream PDF Printer: • Print successfully (cairo comes closest) ∘ Give me the choice of where to stick the file upon Clicking print or make the default name a bit more intuitive ("appname_date.pdf") ∘ default to the last chosen directory or at least "Documents" if it exists ∘ have a superset of Cups-PDF and Cairo print format options • Display correctly in Evince (gold star for both cairo and cups-pdf ... and evince) • Display correctly in Adobe Reader (cups-pdf wins) • Import beautifully in Inkscape (cairo wins) ∘ as real editable fonts and vector art when source is vector art and embedded raster images when not ∘ grouped or upgrouped does not matter although grouped makes things easier to adjust position if you happened to import it over something existing • I don't really care what it looks like in a text editor but my guess would be that the fewest binary blobs is best (cairo wins)
Thanks for reading, /Mike