Xfce Forum

davecs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-21

Posts: 24

Is there a command to open the Print dialog box?

I want to know whether there is a command to open the XFCE Print dialogue box. I find the Scribus dialog box a bit complicated but it does offer the option to use an alternate dialog box. What is the executable for XFCE?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Is there a command to open the Print dialog box?

There used to be an "xfprint" application years ago - but it has long since been deprecated. The only Xfce component that  prints (that I am aware of) is mousepad and it uses GTK3's Print Operation API. But that is a set of code/libraries, not a standalone application.

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mint4all

Member

From: off the map

Registered: 2018-08-21

Posts: 276

Re: Is there a command to open the Print dialog box?

I want to know whether there is a command to open the XFCE Print dialogue box. I find the Scribus dialog box a bit complicated but it does offer the option to use an alternate dialog box. What is the executable for XFCE?

Greetings!

There may be a workable alternative for you: have you looked at trying to use the "yad" dialog builder/utility? It is a fork of gnome's older "zenity", and provides the gui-based function you're looking for.

When combined with thunar's file-selection plus custom-action functions, you can use thunar to select the file you want to print, then right-click the custom-action ("Print file") that will hand it off to "yad"s print dialog; something like ...

yad --print --filename=%N --add-preview

While this should work fine for text, pdf and html files, i'm unclear of how rich documents (docx etc) are being handled. But worth a try. Certainly beats having to load a text editor just to print a file ... Note: I'm unclear how multiple-file selections might be handled.

Fyi: YAD comes with a plethora of other features, some of which pertain to printing as well.

Cheers, m4a

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Linux Mint 21.3 -- xfce 4.18 ... Apple iMAC -- Lenovo, Dell, HP Desktops and Laptops -- Family & Community Support

davecs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-21

Posts: 24

Re: Is there a command to open the Print dialog box?

OK so there isn't a dialog box any more. After some of the other problems I've had with printing from Scribus, I think I'll export as PDF and print from Evince.

mint4all

Member

From: off the map

Registered: 2018-08-21

Posts: 276

Re: Is there a command to open the Print dialog box?

OK so there isn't a dialog box any more. After some of the other problems I've had with printing from Scribus, I think I'll export as PDF and print from Evince.

Prompted by your comment, and with just a bit of tweaking, I was able to add a "Quick Print" button to my panel using the following command option in the launcher ...

bash -c 'myfile=$(yad --file --title="Select a file" --width=800 --height=600) && yad --print --add-preview --title=Print:\ "$myfile" --filename="$myfile"'

It first pops up the file-selection window, followed by the printer-dialog popup -- works like a charm, and is lightweight.

However, currect rendering of the print can get iffy: it looks like plain text is fine, but .pdf .html .ps and all image & rich-text files require proper rendering (by an app?). If you use the HPLIP driver, that should not be a problem for text-based files imho but I can't test it right now (printer is defunct).

Cheers, m4a

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Linux Mint 21.3 -- xfce 4.18 ... Apple iMAC -- Lenovo, Dell, HP Desktops and Laptops -- Family & Community Support

KBar

Member

Registered: 2021-11-05

Posts: 689

Re: Is there a command to open the Print dialog box?

Awesome. One thing I have to note, however, is that your list doesn't contain anything Bash-specific and Bash is anything but lightweight. Launchers and autostart scripts are better be executed with plain POSIX shell. One of such shells, dash for example, is at least four times as fast as Bash.

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Remember to edit the subject of your topic to include the [SOLVED] tag once you're satisfied with the answers or have found a solution (in which case, don't forget to share it as well), so that other members of the community can quickly refer to it and save their time. Pretty please!

mint4all

Member

From: off the map

Registered: 2018-08-21

Posts: 276

Re: Is there a command to open the Print dialog box?

Awesome. One thing I have to note, however, is that your list doesn't contain anything Bash-specific and Bash is anything but lightweight. Launchers and autostart scripts are better be executed with plain POSIX shell. One of such shells, dash for example, is at least four times as fast as Bash.

Thanks for pointing this out -- I admit to not having paid attention to either a shell's resource footprint or perfomance. I found that my mint systems come with the "dash" shell preloaded, so I tried my popup-script with that shell, too. According to the memory stats, there's hardly any difference in memory usage, and no noticable difference in performance.

What I did notice, though, is that every instance of YAD runs in a sub-shell, and that the bulk of memory is consumed by the gui-popups (gtk3+ libs). But I am happy to observe that this "quick print" button does not require an extra thunar+app session for SIMPLE print jobs, such as source code / text files.

Cheers, m4a

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Linux Mint 21.3 -- xfce 4.18 ... Apple iMAC -- Lenovo, Dell, HP Desktops and Laptops -- Family & Community Support