Godot Version
Newest
Question
Will there ever be a print function to print things on actual paper without the need to open notepad or som?
Please see this proposal
1 Like
I’m curious to hear what’s your usecase for the printing functionality?
2 Likes
But more importantly, will it also support punch cards?
4 Likes
Part of the issue with printing is that it’s far from a unified system, different operating systems, and even different versions of operating systems, have different approaches and it’s not trivial to make a system that works everywhere
And since this is a very niche feature not really used by almost any user it’s unlikely to be added to the engine, even if it was trivial to implement which it isn’t
This would be best to add as an add-on
6 Likes
There are people who are using it for softwares, i know the godot engine is for games. But it would still be a nice feature.
There we go!
Im also fine with a addon, i just didnt see anyone making it.
No one working on it is usually a good indication of limited demand for it, or that it’s far from simple to do
2 Likes
But there doesnt need to be a high demand for it? The reason this features come in handy is that if you ever need something like it, it is there.
If there isn’t demand for anyone to be motivated to try to work on it (even one person), and there is no demand for the Godotengine team to see it as a good thing to intergrate, then how will it be developed into Godot?
3 Likes
That’s not how you develop and maintain a project though, you don’t just add anything that someone might want
4 Likes
You know it will, if more and more people are going to make softwares in godot. You know there is gonna be a request for a print function.
Most people don’t need to print things, and they can just export it in some other format and print that
But I don’t see any reason to expect a lot of people to make a lot of non-game applications with Godot, not enough to justify strictly non-game features
3 Likes
I hear this kind of argument all the time in my professional life. “If you just add a feature maybe people will be attracted to our product that otherwise wouldn’t be.” And that’s always a possibility, but the question you should ask yourself is what is the purpose of this project? For Godot - it is to make games.
Printing would be nice. Of course, I would much rather be able to render a scene for printing on my 3D printer so I can literally allow players to print out screenshots in 3D. That would be MUCH cooler for a game engine.
The reality is, we can do both if we make a plugin.
If you personally want a print feature, take a look at the Adobe PDF Library. It supports a bunch of programming languages, and you can use it read, manipulate, and print PDFs. I used a Java version years ago and it was surprisingly powerful and easy to use once I learned how to use it. You could create a plugin for Godot and allow others the joys of printing to PDF. From there, anyone can print to their printer.
4 Likes
Man im not trying to get a discussion here, i ws just wondering why they wouldnt?
And you have someone from the Godot Team, namely @athousandships, (patiently) telling you why they aren’t.
2 Likes
If you’re interested in our philosophy around adding features you can read it here
3 Likes
OMG that made me laugh so hard. That’s an amazing document.
The visuals are stunning. Props to whoever did them.
4 Likes
One thing that it isn’t in that page (that I might try to add) is that a niche or rarely used feature is really hard to maintain because few people are interested in or able to test it, and even fewer are able to fix or improve it if needed, features used by a lot of people are easier to maintain because more people use it in more ways making them run into harder to identify errors
This would be a perfect example of a “oh barely no one actually tests this”
4 Likes