R J Lorimer is ecstatic that  GTK+ now has printing support built-in. According to the dashboard database at Eclipse.org, one of the most desired Eclipse features was the ability to print in Linux from Eclipse. R J himself was surprised when he first installed Eclipse on Linux and found that the 'Print' menu item was disabled. "Prior to now, there has been no consistent, clear API to use for printing in Linux. Amazingly, there was no standard printing API. Programs that needed programmatic print support spurred the implementation of their own printing API for GTK," he says.

With the new improvement,  it's just a hop, skip and jump for SWT to begin hooking in, and in the correct environment, start offering integrated printing, R J comments. Carolyn Macleod from IBM will be spearheading the effort, and will be working with Steve Northover on the project.

"This is good news of us who do our primary work through Linux; while tools are making it easier and easier to not have to print code and text files, it's nice to be able to do so now when necessary. In addition, this will free up a bunch of bugzilla votes for Eclipse+Linux users so we can vote on other interesting and obscure Linux problems," R J adds.