"Printers" vs. "Printing"...?

Christopher A. Williams chriswfedora at cawllc.com
Wed Dec 28 12:29:32 UTC 2011


There's some real confusion I've noticed in F16 (also present in F15)
regarding printer setup. In the System Settings applet, there is a
section on printers which includes the ability to add printers.

...Except that applet is completely and total incapable of adding any
kind of network printer. It complains about FirewallD not running, and
several other other settings missing. If you install FirewallD, things
on F16 x64 totally break. I almost destroyed 2 different machines
yesterday because of this stupid applet.

Then there is the other "Printing" application, aka the old, tried and
true "system-config-printer" application. It's much better hidden and
not well placed (the "Other" category - really??? shouldn't this be in
"System Tools") except that you have to know it's there. This
application DOES work to let you set up both local and network printers.
It also notices several (of the same) settings not properly set, but
then offers to "fix" this for you. One mouse-click and it's done.

So why is it that the one which DOESN'T work made to be easier to find,
and to potentially screw up the machine, than the one that does work?
And why are both still there? Isn't this what we would call a usability
disaster? No...?

Chris

-- 

====================================
"If you have integrity, nothing else matters.
If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."

--Harvey Mackay 




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