Back in 2008 Nick Ellery noticed that the default printer test page used more ink that it really needed to: Bug #298935 (“test print uses far too much ink”). Millions and millions of these pages get printed every year, so any saving in ink will be amplified. In addition, it still had the pre-2010 Ubuntu logomark: Bug #933489 (“Ubuntu Printer test page has old branding”). Hopefully, the ink saving will help save the planet and everyone will benefit from something slightly prettier.
Scan of new Ubuntu 12.04 Printer Test Page. The design is scaled to fit any size, not just A4 and US-Letter
With the first Ubuntu 12.04 Beta release now out and having been in prepartion over the last fortnight, there’s been a chance to look over and see if the Design Team can assist with reponding to any bugs that might have been missed for too long.
One year ago there were a number of good suggestions for making the test printouts to be more reusable, for instance by including a calendar or origami shape and would be good to incorporate in the future. Perhaps you can come up with a good design and suggest it for the next release cycle building up to Ubuntu 12.10?
Thank you to Lucas Camargo for experimenting with thinning the previous template. To Emily Maher on the design team for working on a more compact circular design that matches the rest of Ubuntu (and should use even less ink). And to Lars Ubernickel and Till Kamppeter for writing and uploading the new bannertopdf support code that pulls in the design and sends it out to the printer with debugging information appended.
Fantastic job! Love the design for the colors.
I would definitely hang them out a bit towards the left margin though, this way the negative space at the corners of the bounding boxes for the circles makes them look a bit indented to the right.
Also, wouldn’t it make sense to use the custom Ubuntu typeface for the detail text?
Keep up the good work, guys!
Small change, but looks great and improves Ubuntu even more.
Thank you! I really hated going through a whole cartridge in order to test :P
The only thing I missed in that printer test page is the Ubuntu Mono font. Let’s kill Courier with fire!
The real test page has borders which show if the alignment is correct. I think these are essential.
Yours in fact looks nicer!
Agree. Please, Paul, add them!
Maybe add some system information too, like:
Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 64-Bit – Unity3D
last update: Sat Mar 3 21:20:22 CET 2012
Paradiesstaub: there’s already a timestamp on the test page. Yes, perhaps the Ubuntu version could be added—could you possibly file it as a bug against ‘bannertopdf’, so that it doesn’t get lost?
Dmitry: There are a set of bordered added dynamically around the template that show the actual page boundaries. It’s Larsu that’s been working on the implementation details, so credit should go that way! If you spot anything wrong with the alignment borders being added please do post them on the bug tracker (see below).
Fitoschido: Emily’s original design has “Ubuntu Mono” specified, and if there’s time before release Ubuntu Mono will hopefully be embedded and added to the output too. The reason for using the default Courier equivalent is that it’s one of the fonts required to be always be available by the PDF specification. From memory, there’s was an unexpected interaction with the font embedding code inside the Poppler PDF library, that Larsu found and which needs understanding fully first.
Please remember to file it as a bug report so that it gets done!
Adding fun/informative details to the printer test page is such a terrific idea. It’s those kinds of small but thoughtful details that make people feel “delight” at their operating system. I’d be overjoyed to see this in Precise, but my rational side will look forward to this being implemented sometime around Ubuntu 18.04.
I think a small list of Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts would be ideal. People rarely print more than one test page, I imagine, and a list of keyboard shortcuts that could be pinned next to a monitor could be useful for a long time before having to be recycled.
Regard becoming in the same way desirable to build a chicken house as to create a cathedral.
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This is a good idea – the more usefull & informative it is the better.
making a page that could be used as a calendar, or other use is brilliant, and making it funky, imaninative & entertaining would be a great achievement