This repository hosts the code for the File Common Print Dialog Backend. This backend manages and provides information about printing to a file via the print dialog.

It contains one of the components Ayush Bansal worked on as part of his Google Summer of Code 2018 project with the Linux Foundation, the complete documentation can be found here. It was improved and adopted to CPDB 2.x by Gaurav Guleria.

The Common Print Dialog Backends project aims to move the responsability on the part of the print dialog which communicates with the print system away from the GUI toolkit/app developers to the print system's developers and also to bring all print technologies available to the user (CUPS, cloud printing services, ...) into all application's print dialogs.

• cpdb-libs: Version >= 2.0.0 (or GIT Master)

• GLIB 2.0: sudo apt install libglib2.0-dev

$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

If you are updating from an older version, please kill the old version of the backend:

$ sudo killall file

This way the next time when a print dialog is opened the new version of the backend is started.

The backend is auto-activated when a frontend (like a CPDB-supporting print dialog or the example frontend demo/print_frontend of cpdb-libs) is started, so there is no need to run it explicitly.

However, if you wish to see the debug statements in the backend code, you can run /usr/local/lib/print-backends/file.

• Nilanjana Lodh's Google Summer of Code 2017 Final Report

• Ayush Bansal's Google Summer of Code 2018 Final Report

• Gaurav Guleria's Google Summer of Code 2022 Final Report