SynapseDirect

At present, Synapse offers multiple ways of printing a document.  This includes

• Direct postscript printing to a postscript device
• GSPrint - postscript printing to the default windows printer via ghostscript
  
• LaTeX printing ( a LaTeX template which then produces a PDF )
• Export to MS Word and print from there
  
• Internet Explorer printing

The problem with all of these methods of printing is that there is no audit trail, and no way to reproduce a document that was printed before - because each printout is actually a report, and if you change the report parameters, eg. the primary FP, then you get a different document.

Also, because there is choice, there arises the chance for confusion ... because there is too much choice!

I therefore propose to simplify printing by making server based printing the default.  Any document you print will be sent to the server as postscript, and you will be returned a PDF.  This will be stored in the cache-listener directory on the server, and means you will always have a print image of everything you print.  You might think that this will result in using up a lot of disk storage, but in fact, the pdfs produced are quite small - 4kb - 8kb in size, from an original postscript file size of 100kb.  And because these PDFs are quite small, it takes very little time to retrieve them from the server.

I therefore plan on removing the IE printing option, and also the LaTeX printing and templates.  This latter decision will mean that the install binary for Synapse will drop by about 45Mbs!

I plan on keeping Direct PS printing and printing from Word, but in both instances the PDFs will still be created on the server as part of the audit trail.  However, if changes are made in the Word document, these will not be reflected in the pdf image stored on the server.

Note that the PDF generation will mean that all users will have to install the Synapse web server that is currently in development as part of the patient web portal as the browser will be used to retrieve the pdfs created.