On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Owen Williams wrote: > Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 08:55:07 -0500 > From: Owen Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Iain * <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Usability] Re: [Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and > GNOME (Summit mockups)
[Rearranged message. Owen, please try to avoid top posting. The easier you make for people to follow the context of the dicussion if the more likely they are to be receptive to your suggestions, at least that is the theory] > On Fri, 2005-12-16 at 00:21 +0000, Iain * wrote: > > > Export as mydocument2.blah > > > you are still working on mydocument1.blah > > > > > > Gnome uses Export and "Save a copy" synonymously. > > > > Hmmm, so thats what it means... > > Still doesnt answer the question as to why you need Export as PDF > > instead of having it in the save. > I think because after you "save-as" you're working in that form of > document. So if I save as Word, the filename is now .doc. If I save > as .txt, I'm editing plaintext. Worringly you are editing plaintext but the display will still show typsetting such as bold or italic which has already been discarded. > But since PDF is output-only and can't be edited, Sorry to be pedantic but PDF may in practical terms not be very easy to edit but in most cases PDF is editable if you have the right software. > you can't tell the user they are working on a .pdf file. You > have to call it exporting or else the user might think they are now > editing a pdf. The simplest answer is usually the right one, what seems most likely to me is the historical use of Postscript and Portable Document Format for printing means that implementation detail was exposed to users. As others have already pointed out having a shared PDF printer takes advantage of the more or less standard printing infrastructure and gives that feature to any applications which can print. This and request I recently made to Gnome Photo Printer [1] made me consdier the idea of a more generic File printer which could also provide raster output using gdkpixbuf (or ImageMagick or other backend) but then I'm probably taking the idea too far [insert suitable Joel Spolsky quote here]. - Alan _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
