system-config-printer-1.1.8-5.fc11.x86_64 With a slow backend (Bluetooth), I get the "Please wait" dialogue showing behind the authentication dialogue when adding a new printer (and the UI blocks...).
Oh, this is basically that the UI blocks. Known, but won't be fixed in time for Fedora 12. This being tracked upstream by: https://fedorahosted.org/system-config-printer/ticket/102 https://fedorahosted.org/system-config-printer/ticket/117
What about the "Please wait" dialogue showing up badly parented?
Fixed upstream. It should appear parented to: 1. the main window, after clicking 'New' 2. the new printer dialog, when using that 3. the printer properties dialog, when clicking one of the 'Change...' buttons
I might be able to get to the worst offenders for the UI blocking for Fedora 12.
No, this is just hard to get right. Unfortunately libcups only provides a blocking API so we'd have to put that operation in a separate thread. If we did that, we'd need to create a new connection for it, and if we did *that* we'd lose any authentication caching we had because none of the other operations do that. The answer is to fix all of the code, but I know from experience with doing this with the troubleshooter that it will definitely introduce bugs. Will get to it for next time round (1.2.x).
Actually one of the main reasons this is that cupspk.py calls into GTK directly so can't be run in a separate thread. I remember now that I had to put the devices list fetching into the main thread for exactly this reason. That part at least ought to be fixed in Fedora 12.
This sort of fell out of porting it to polkit-1. :-) Various IPP operations system-config-printer uses can still block the UI and that needs comprehensively fixing as mentioned in comment #5, but that won't be in Fedora 12.
So, the 'fetch devices' UI blocking part is fixed in 1.1.12-4.fc12. Keeping open for the rest.
This package has changed ownership in the Fedora Package Database. Reassigning to the new owner of this component.
Fixing the bug would need an extensive refactoring of s-c-p code, but s-c-p is now in maintenance mode only, I'm sorry. If you have a patch, please send PR to https://github.com/OpenPrinting/system-config-printer and I'll review it. Otherwise you can use CUPS web UI for installing permanent queues, temporary queues for newer devices work out of the box.