Personal laser parameter specifications
From Printing
About The Personal Laser Parameters
This represents a group of printers on the market and is representative of numerous similar printers currently in the marketplace. The prototype dialogue design will act as a methodological and practical specification, on which an interaction designer appointed by a printer's manufacturer, can base final dialogue designs.
Personal Laser here means small laser printers intended for personal or home office use, for more details see the Personal laser page
Which Parameters?
The parameters included are considered to be the ones typically required, based upon a survey of printers within this cluster.
What Order?
This order shall be to be logical, intuitively right, and driven by the user's ultimate goal; to get their print out, and in the way they envisaged it. Parameters shall always be seen in order, and any combination of controls could theoretically be displayed together, as this would depend on the tag selected. We have looked at these sections loosely as a print narrative, which means in groups of parameters pertaining to the following themes.
- information (data),
- transformation-transforming the information into the image to be printed,
- the paper- about the physical print to come out of the printer.
However, additional sections are inserted, and in in the various instances where a parameter can be said to belong within more than one of these areas it's position in the list has been selected intuitively, and by using the criteria described above.
Using the Preview
The controls seen here cannot be seen independently of the preview. This is an essential part of describing and showing exactly what a user is getting or changing when they use the controls.
Information to be included in the Summary
Based on the projected parameters to be included in this printer cluster, the information to be included in the summary shall be the current setting of the following parameters:
(above the preview)
- Paper size
- Media Type
- Source
- Resolution
The information shall be listed in the order in which they occur in the parameters list ( this in turn is the order of the parameters in the PPD file).
About the Sections
The following information is presented in a strict order, this is the running order of the printing parameters, or level 3 controls. The controls are divided into sections, delineated by the dotted divided lines.
Details about laying out the controls are to be found in the dialogue layout section
Universal controls
Copies
This is fully documented in the Universal Control Zone of the Level 2 dialog page.
Controls for Personal Laser
Page Orientation
Control
Select either landscape or portrait using dynamic icons.
Preview
Accurately reflect the page orientation in the preview
Default
Portrait
Print On - Media Type and Size
The former categories of media type and media size have been integrated into a new "print on" set of controls. The approach includes contingencies for situations where the types of print media available are known, or are totally unknown. The known situations can include various scenarios:
- when a printer can detect available media types
- when the printer is configured to include certain media types
- when the printer administration has designated certain media types to the printer via a user interface.
The list can therefore include media types which are definitely available- or theoretically available -depending on the capabilities of the printer and/or the administration of printers.
Users will then have the option of whether to use these available media types, or use their own selection. This will not be selected from media types available, rather from a matrix of supported media types. These can be selected via further options of type and size.
Print On: When media types are known:
Control
Print on: + pop-up box . List available/known media type and size combined. Plus an option, My Choice which appears after a separating line
Margins- parameters are small, medium, large, extra large, custom. If a user has selected border-less printing?? Margins are shown in the preview.
When a user selects custom four spin boxes are displayed in the constellation depicted in the image above (NESW) they correspond to the sides of paper which is currently displayed - taking into account it's orientation (see below).
Preview
- The media type is listed in the preview
- The media type is shown in the correct proportion
Default
The default is set by the manufacturer or printer administration.
Margins: small
Print On: When media types are known but a user wishes to use a type not immediately available
When a user has selected "My choice" from the pop-up list
Control
Further controls of Type and Size become available
- Users first select a media type- this list includes all media types supported by the printer.
- The supported sizes of the available types become available. Only in cases where custom sizes are appropriate, will further controls to fully define the size of the print image be available.
Margins- parameters are small, medium, large, extra large, custom. If a user has selected border-less printing?? Margins are shown in the preview. When a user selects custom four spin boxes are displayed in the constellation depicted in the image above (NESW) they correspond to the sides of paper which is currently displayed - taking into account it's orientation (see below).
Preview
Where appropriate, the preview image will reflect the media type. The exact media type and size will be listed in the written summary. Represent the different margin size in the preview.
Default
Default is to be A4- or can be set by the printer admistrator. Margins : small
When actual media type available is unknown:
Control
Print on: list supported media types size: when media type is selected, list available sizes. custom size
Margins- parameters are small, medium, large, extra large, custom. If a user has selected border-less printing?? Margins are shown in the preview.
When a user selects custom four spin boxes are displayed in the constellation depicted in the image above (NESW) they correspond to the sides of paper which is currently displayed - taking into account it's orientation (see below).
Preview
Where appropriate, the preview image will reflect the media type. The exact media type and size will be listed in the written summary. Represent the margin size in the preview image
Default
The default is set by the manufacturer or printer administration.
Margins: small
Color Management
Control
Preview
Management
Borders
Control
Select either off or line type, which is shown, not described, from a pop up list
In Preview
Draw selected line type on the preview image
Default setting
Off
Pages
There are three seperate approaches to choosing page ranges:
- for jobs of 1 page
- 2-4 pages
- more than 4 pages
Pages- When only 1 pages
In this instance there will be no controls, just the "Pages:" label and the "1" text as content.
Pages- When 2-4 pages
Control
- See image. Each page in the print job is represented by a page image which can toggles between a selected or deselected state.
- If selected: a green check symbol, the page icon is highlighted in the approriate select colour. The page number is bold and visible.
- If unselected: the page icon has a red cross mark over the page number, the check box is shown as unselected.
- If there is only 1 page in the print job: the page cannot be deselected.
- There must always be at least one page selected. Therefore when a user deselects the final selected page, page one of the print job will be reselected. When page 1 is the final selected page, page 2 will be re-selected.
In Preview
The number of pages to be printed -i.e. the number of selected pages- is shown in the page range number.
Default
All pages selected.
Localisation
The order of the pages in this case will follow the page-turning order therefore:
- Languages which read right to left: The page order will remain unchanged (although the icons will be aligned right).
- For languages which flip right-to left: The page order will be reversed.
Page(s)- When more than 4 pages
Control
Select one page range using pop up numerical list. In the second box, the option - (blank, line) heads the list.
Click on the plus icon to add a free text box pre-populated with instructions. Click on the minus icon to remove the second selected range.
In the Preview
Default
print the complete page range available.
Pages per side (n-up)
Pages per side cannot be shown in conjunction with poster.
Control
Select the number of pages to be printed per sheet using pop up alpha-numeric list. 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 16, 25 Choose the running order of the pages, from a series of diagrams accessed via a pop up box
Preview
Show:
- correct number of pages per sheet
- appropriate orientation
- the range of pages per sheet in the display showing the current age and page range (under the preview image)
Default
1
Poster
Poster cannot be shown in conjunction with pages per side.
Control
Select the number of sheets the page is to be printed over, using pop up numerical list. E.g 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5
Higher numbers of sheets, or a banner print options are available in a second level pop-up.
Preview
Show the complete number of sheets required to make up one complete page image. This number will appear in the page range counter.
Default
Off
Both sides
Otherwise known as duplexing. These controls are for automatic duplexing only.
Control
- duplexing is turned on using radio button controls.
- only when duplexing is on, show the page turning options. Despite there being only 2 options, this is a pop-up list to differentiate it from the radio button control used directly above.
Preview
- animate the appropriate page movement when scrolling through pages on the preview
- show the both sides icon in the appropriate corner of the preview image: top right for book-style. bottom right for flip-over style
- show pages 1-4 of number of pages in page number
Default
- duplexing: off
- page turning: bookstyle
Print Quality
Control
Select print quality from a pop up box. These shall be named quality states as is appropriate for this cluster group. In other more complicated printer clusters more detailed resolution descriptions may be used.
Preview
Show differences in quality in the summary description only.
Default
Best - or according to printer manufacturer or administrative settings.
Color Settings
Control
Select the color settings from a pop up box, in which are a list of descriptive names for a preset color controls.
Preview
Show differences in color settings in the summary description only, unless a monochrome options is selected, in which case the preview image will also be shown in monochrome.
Default
According to printer manufacturer or administrative settings
Watermarking
Presets
Select off, preset text watermarks-e.g. Confidential or add text or add get image
Selecting a preset watermark brings up the amend font button. This in turn opens the appropriate custom font widget.
Custom Text
Selecting add text brings an imput text field; and the custom text button
Selecting get image brings up the browse for image button
Plus the transparency slider.
Custom Image
Preview
All watermarks are shown in the preview.
The transparency adjustments will be visible in the preview
The watermark can be moved with a tool in the preview, on mouse over the background of the watermark will become semi-opaque and grab lines will appear in the corner of this area.
Use radio buttons to select whether to add the watermark to all pages or just the first page of a document. This appears for all watermark types, except for documents of 1 page
Default
Off
Source
The source has some resonance and relationship with the selection of media type. It is accepted that a small number of users may wish to select the type as media to be printed upon by selecting the corresponding printer tray. It must firstly be stated that users will not be encouraged to do this and no concrete information about available media types shall be given here. However to take this instance into accountmedia type(print on) will be updated in the rare cases that:
- a user has not changed the "Print on" selection, and the print on choice remains on default
- the types of media available are known
- a user has selected a specifically named tray
Control
A pop-up list populated with:automatic, Manual Feed, and the appropriate numbers of trays. No media names to be used.
Preview
Source is listed in the summary text.
Default
Automatic
Which way up
Control
Select either right way up or upside down using icons which toggle between on and off states. The names given can be used as alternative text.
Preview
Show the image orientation in the preview
Default
Right way up.
forthcoming
- sections?
- "Fit" parameter: did we not throw this out for being application specific?
- "both sides"
- document (not this page, I know) that the top-level parameter can never be represented by a checkbox
- detailed description of the animation (flipping pages, sliding pages)
