Gimp-snap: Printer / Scanner, Turboprint-Plugin, Appearance

snap
1

Dear readers,
I just upgraded Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 and replaced my Gimp-debs with the Gimp-snap. A first test showed that the snap does not provide some functionalities “out of the box” which I had with the deb-installation:

  • Printers had to be provided via snap connect - as a snap-beginner it took me a while to find out
  • I am using the commercial Turboprint-plugin, however, it does not show up in the snap - is there some path voodoo to point the snap to the plugin-directory?
  • The scanner does not show up under “File - Acquire” - there seems to be no “snap connect option” - is there a way to restore the interaction of gimp and scanner?
  • The system theme looks very outdated in the snap and does not obey system colors - if there is a solution to this matter of taste?
    Thanks in advance for helpful hints and pointers!
2

Does the turboprint plugin require anything beyond GIMP itself? e.g. shared libraries? If it is completely self-contained then you can add it via $HOME/snap/gimp/current/.config/GIMP/2.10/plug-ins which is equivalent to non-snapped path $HOME/.config/GIMP/2.10/plug-ins.

@jdstrand, is there a scanner-enabling plug lying around that we can add to GIMP?

This is difficult because GIMP uses GTK-2, which is old and uses shared libraries to store the theme information. That means it is difficult to share the theme from the host in a portable way.

3

Thank you, Daniel, for your response. I will try your suggestion regarding the Turboprint plugin and copy the files into the directory you mentioned. However, it seems to be a little bit more complicated, because just now I found this remark in the Turboprint support forum by one of the developers:
“I just tried to figure out how to install the plugin for the Snap package, however it seems to be more complicated - maybe we can add this for the next TurboPrint release.” So users will have to be patient.
As far as the cosmetics are concerned I can work with Gimp in Millennium look. More important for me is the ability to acquire images conveniently by scanning directly in Gimp.

4

I’d have to see the denials to be sure, but I would’ve thought that all that would be needed would be network and maybe avahi-observe.

5

How do I update the library with a vulnerability found in the snap package?

6

the snap maintainer gets usually notified via email if there is a vulnerable lib in the snap and is then supposed to trigger a re-build of the package for you to get the fix included … (this is really a question you should ask in a new topic though, seems pretty unrelated to anything discussed here)

7

What is the state of « scanner » connection to Gimp ?

I’m not able to scan straightaway « through » Gimp, have to use xsane or simplescan before to acquire my documents. And then open them in Gimp.

8

pehaps adding the raw-usb plug might work … could be worth a try to at least get usb scanners to work (are there still SCSI scanners ?) …