AddDialog: Show the supported language for each driver.

[tintou]

Fixes #156

[jeremypw]

I've tried adding most of the driver properties to the list and while this resolves some duplicates, there are some HP drivers that differ (afaict) only slightly by the ppd name (hplip:1/ppd/... hplip:2/ppd/... hplip:3/ppd/... etc). In some cases (not HP) the product name is more informative.

Difficult to know what to do about this. One solution would be to only show recommended drivers by default (with an option to show all). Also could add a facility to show all available properties for a given driver. Could check whether the previous make and model was the same but different product name.

[jeremypw]

Example of near duplicate HP Drivers

[jeremypw]

Need design input regarding how much information to show in the list (see also my comments of 4th Mar above).

[andrewdbate]

Just to add my two cents here, it seems like including the PPD name could be information overload but at the same time there has to be a way to uniquely identify each driver.

Would it be possible to only show the PPD name if it is necessary to make the entry unique?

For example, the above list shows multiple entries for HP 2000c, hpcups 3.20.3 (en). In this case, it is necessary to include the PPD name for each because this is the only way to uniquely identify each entry. However, for HP 2000C Foomatic/pcl3 (en) the PPD name does not need to be included because the entry is unique without including it.

Not sure what your thoughts are on this suggestion design-wise.

Either way, it would be good if there was a way to get all information on a particular driver before adding the printer. For example, if there was another panel that shows all information, including the PPD name, for the currently selected driver in the list.

[andrewdbate]

At a minimum, I think the language needs to be included next to the driver name in the list. This would solve the issue with repeated driver names for Kyocera printers (see original issue https://github.com/elementary/switchboard-plug-printers/issues/156).

However, @jeremypw's comments of 4th Mar above need to be taken into consideration for other makes of printers, e.g., HP.

[danirabbit]

Showing everything on one line is indeed a lot and kind of hard to compare. Can we maybe split it up into two lines so you'd get something like:

HP 2500c, hpcups 3.20.03 (recommended) hplip:1/ppd/hplip/HP/hp-2500c.ppd — en

HP 2500c, hpcups 3.20.03 hplip:2/ppd/hplip/HP/hp-2500c.ppd — en

HP 2500c, hpcups 3.20.03 drv:///hpcups.drv/hp-2500c.ppd — en

Goals here:

• Avoid cutting off information at smaller window widths
• Make it more likely that differentiating information lines up so that it's easier to compare
• Make sure "(recommended)" stands out and isn't buried in between other information
• Use — as a separator instead of () to more clearly differentiate that the lang code isn't information that is part of a driver name or location/uri/whatever that means. I put it at the end here because it looks like in Jeremy's screenshot that it's not very often differentiating for a row

[andrewdbate]

FWIW I like this layout suggestion. Note however that while the lang code is less important for HP, it is the key differentiating piece of information for Kyocera printer drivers (see original issue https://github.com/elementary/switchboard-plug-printers/issues/156)

[jeremypw]

Yes, a design which is necessary for HP printers may be overkill or otherwise sub-optimal for other manufacturers unfortunately but I guess that is inevitable. Dani's suggestion is a reasonable compromise.

[danirabbit]

We could also switch around the two parts of the bottom line if that's more important. I think that's still not too hard to compare:

HP 2500c, hpcups 3.20.03 (recommended) en — hplip:1/ppd/hplip/HP/hp-2500c.ppd

HP 2500c, hpcups 3.20.03 fr — hplip:2/ppd/hplip/HP/hp-2500c.ppd

HP 2500c, hpcups 3.20.03 es — drv:///hpcups.drv/hp-2500c.ppd

[andrewdbate]

I think it is better with the language first. That way it is more obvious which drivers you definitely don't want (e.g., if you are on an English language system you don't want the fr or es drivers).