[UX] Printer panel: provide better error feedback
Due to the extremely complex nature of printers, the Printers panel relies heavily on feedback by drivers/CUPS+backend libraries/printers themselves, but most of such (error) feedback is simply ignored by this panel, which results in most buttons not working for no apparent reason. I believe that an already better solution would be just displaying non-blocking, asynchronous in-app notifications in the panel (or job list) for each action that fails.
There are several buttons that just "seem to work once in a while" (with no feedback/explanation given), the most recent cases I found are:
-
(known) pause button in job list often does not work, although in the GUI it gets toggled as everything worked -
(known) remove button in job list sometimes does not work, no feedback given -
sometimes printers cannot be renamed, but editing the text field is possible and just gives no effect -
sometimes printers cannot be renamed, but editing the text field is possible and just gives no effect -
the "test print" button gives again no feedback, which makes it often look non-functional: maybe closing the "Printer options" page and sending an in-app notification if the job is queued would be better -
finally, failed/suspended jobs (e.g. low ink, driver error etc.) do not give any feedback on the main view despite being quite important, and opening the list of jobs for a printer (which just "does not work" for some reason unknown to the user) is the only way to see them, as plain labels next to the job
What are your opinions on this?