Optional extension: a photo print assistant for multi-image sheets

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
c
Domain
desktop

Research direction

Start by reviewing the linked PixPrint project and its sources, then compare its GTK 3 extension integration and standalone GTK 4 assistant with Pix's current extension model. Done would require an upstream decision on whether to carry this feature and a defined integration scope; the issue does not name files or tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Pix's image_print prints one image per sheet. There is no way to put
several photos on one sheet, no 10 × 15 layouts, no automatic pagination
across many images — the classic photo-printing case.

I've built this as a Pix extension and would like to ask whether it is of
interest upstream, or whether it should stay a third-party package.

Architecture. The extension itself is GTK 3 and tiny — it registers
the menu entry, collects the selected files and starts a separate
process. The assistant (layout, preview, printing, PDF export) is a
standalone GTK 4 binary. GTK 3 and GTK 4 are never linked into the same
target, so nothing about Pix's own toolkit changes and no fork is
involved.

Current state. Working and packaged as two .deb, GPL-2.0-or-later.
CI builds the extension inside the Pix source tree against
master.mint22 (3.4.10). Screenshot and sources:
https://github.com/3ddruck12/PixPrint

Feature-wise: paper sizes from A3 to 9 × 13, one/two/four images per
sheet plus a passport template, fit and fill, copies per image, automatic
pagination, preview with sheet edges, printing via GtkPrintOperation
and PDF export.

The reason I'm asking. Pix publishes no pix.pc and has no stable
extension ABI, so a third-party extension has to be rebuilt for every Pix
version. That is workable, but fragile for users. If the extension lived
upstream, that problem disappears.

Happy to submit it as a PR if there is interest — and equally happy to
hear that a second GTK 4 binary is not something Pix wants to carry.

Dominant language
C
Stars
270
Forks
47
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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