Storing print settings in GConf is completely broken in Evolution 2.9.6.

After packaging Evolution 2.9.6 for Fedora Core, RPM revealed these schema errors during installation:

   $ sudo rpm -ivh evolution-2.9.6-1.fc7.i386.rpm 
   ...
   WARNING: Failed to parse default value `GTK_PAPER_NAME_A3' for schema
   (/schemas/apps/evolution/shell/paper_size)
   WARNING: failed to parse type name `double'
   WARNING: invalid or missing type for schema 
   (/schemas/apps/evolution/shell/paper_width)
   WARNING: failed to parse type name `double'
   WARNING: invalid or missing type for schema 
   (/schemas/apps/evolution/shell/paper_height)
   WARNING: failed to parse type name `double'
   WARNING: invalid or missing type for schema 
   (/schemas/apps/evolution/shell/scale)

These warnings are coming from apps_evolution_shell.schemas, which has numerous problems.  For starters:

   - Preprocessor symbols are not allowed in schema files.
     GTK_PAPER_NAME_A3 should be "iso_a3".

   - The floating point type is named "float", not "double".

These errors cause the user to see an error dialog when attempting to print (see the screenshot in comment #1).  The Details button on the dialog reveals even more problems:

   File: shell/apps_evolution_shell.schemas.in.in

   Type mismatch: Expected `string' got `int' for key 
   /apps/evolution/shell/n_copies
   Type mismatch: Expected `string' got `bool' for key 
   /apps/evolution/shell/collate
   Type mismatch: Expected `string' got `int' for key 
   /apps/evolution/shell/print_pages
   Type mismatch: Expected `string' got `int' for key 
   /apps/evolution/shell/page_set
   Type mismatch: Expected `string' got `bool' for key 
   /apps/evolution/shell/reverse
   Type mismatch: Expected `string' got `float' for key 
   /apps/evolution/shell/scale
   Type mismatch: Expected `string' got `int' for key 
   /apps/evolution/shell/page_ranges

The code that manipulates these keys (e-util/e-print.c) treats all of these keys as strings, whereas the .schemas file defines them as a variety of types.

Furthermore, many of the default values that appear in the schema file are questionable (e.g. default_source defaults to "/home/ebby/Desktop/"), and they don't respect locale (e.g. the default paper size in the United States should be "na_letter", not "iso_a3").


Rather than trying to clean up this mess, let me propose an alternate method that is simpler and more robust than what was released in 2.9.6.

A GtkPrintSettings object represents the delta between user-selected, site-specific print settings versus the standard default print settings built into the GTK+ print system.  Only the delta needs to be stored in GConf, not every conceivable print setting as its own individual key.

I propose setting up a single GConf key as a list of "key=value" strings.  (I picked /apps/evolution/shell/printing.)  gtk_print_settings_foreach() makes it very simple to build such a list and write it to GConf.  To load the settings, just read the GConf key into a GSList and use gtk_print_settings_set() to set each "key=value" item.

There's still time to get this right before 2.10 ships.