Development/Tutorials/Printing Hello World

The mission

Print Hello World on your printer.

The KDE version

This code will work for KDE 3 as for KDE 4.

The code

1. include <kprinter.h>
2. include <qpainter.h>
3. include <kapplication.h>
4. include <kaboutdata.h>
5. include <kmessagebox.h>
6. include <kcmdlineargs.h>

/* This prints Hello World on your printer

• /

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

       KAboutData aboutData( "test", "test",
       "1.0", "test", KAboutData::License_GPL,
       "(c) 2006" );
       KCmdLineArgs::init( argc, argv, &aboutData );
       KApplication khello;

 KPrinter job;
 job.setFullPage( true );
 if ( job.setup() )
 {
   QPainter painter;
   painter.begin( &job );
   painter.drawText(100,100,"Hello World");
   painter.end(); 
   // this makes the print job start
 }

}

Explanation

You need a KDE instance to print, because this instance stores your configuration, including your printer configuration. You create one by instanciating the KApplication class.

How to compile

With KDE 4

Quite complicated:

gcc print.cpp -o print -I/home/kde-devel/qt-unstable/include/Qt \
-I/home/kde-devel/qt-unstable/include/Qt-Core \
-I/home/kde-devel/qt-unstable/include -I/home/kde-devel/kde/include \
-L/home/kde-devel/kde/lib -L/home/kde-devel/qt-unstable/lib -lkdeui \
-lkdecore -ldl -lkdeprint

CMake

CMakeLists.txt

project (printhelloworld) find_package(KDE4 REQUIRED) include_directories( ${KDE4_INCLUDES} ) kde4_add_executable(printhelloworld main.cpp) target_link_libraries(printhelloworld ${KDE4_KDEPRINT_LIBS})

Make and Run

Then do:

cmake .
make
./printhelloworld

With KDE 3

Quite easy:

gcc printtest.cpp -o print -I/usr/lib/qt3/include -I/opt/kde3/include \
-L/opt/kde3/lib -L/usr/lib/qt3/lib  -lqt-mt -lkdeprint

See also

• Point your konqueror to kde:kprinter

Tip

Note: This page deals with content related to KDE 3. If you are developing for KDE 4, this information might not be valid anymore.

Tip

Note: This page is about KDE 4. It isn't applicable for KDE 3 development.