Hello,
On Mar 6 18:36 Simon Matter wrote (excerpt):
How about setting the default based on LANG or LC_PAPER
environment vars?
Or provide an option to do so? The same is done for
printing systems, isn't it?
"no" from my point of view.
Explanations from my point of view:
I think setting the default paper size based on LANG cannot
work reliably in practice because I think there are LANG
settings where both A4 and Letter are used as paper sizes,
cf. 'parts of Mexico' in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size
that reads
-------------------------------------------------------
... A4 size, are the international standard used by
almost every country. The only exceptions are the
United States, Canada, and parts of Mexico,
where 'Letter' is more prevalent.
-------------------------------------------------------
And what to do for generic settings like LANG=POSIX
that are in practice useless to set an actually
right paper size?
Finally setting the default paper size based on LANG
must be wrong when a user has a scanner that neither
supprts 'A4' nor 'Letter' (e.g. a small scanner)
or when the user has several sacnners where different
default paper sizes should be used.
Setting the default paper size based on LC_PAPER
does not work in practice because I think usually
LC_PAPER is the same as LANG and then see above.
According to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size
the fallback for the paper size should be A4
because A4 works in almost every country on our planet
(except nowadays the one single misfit country that
claims for itself it is "first" - "All animals are
equal but some animals are more equal than others").
Regarding the default paper size for printing:
The default paper size for printing must not be set
according to whatever system internal global value
like a locale setting or /etc/papersize or whatever.
The default paper size for printing must only be set
according to what paper is actually loaded in the
printer device in its default paper tray.
It leads to nothing else but an endless sequence of
annoyance for the user when the default page size
that is used by the software does not match the paper
size that is actually used by the (printer) hardware.
What paper is actually loaded in the printer device
default paper tray must be correctly specified when
setting up a print queue in the queue configuration
which is nowadays the PPD file.
Then user applications can use the right page size
according to what is stored in the PPD file, cf.
"PPD files: Printer-specific options" in
https://en.opensuse.org/Concepts_printing
Furthermore see
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Print_Settings_with_CUPS
--------------------------------------------------------
There is no such thing as "THE" default paper size.
--------------------------------------------------------
FYI how things can go wrong you may have a look at
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Landscape_Printing
Basically 'A4' versus 'Letter' can go wrong in the same
way as 'Landscape' versus 'Portrait' can go wrong.
Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
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