how to print lists

Thanks for your question.

It might help us, if you tell us which software you intent to use. If it's just "a list" you might want to look at Openoffice.org Calc (Applications->Office->Openoffice.org Spreadsheet).

I want to print album, artist, composer and song lists from Amarok. I either need to get the lists into openoffice, or to print them directly from Amarok.

I suspect you will need to think about scripting to achieve this as it is not functionality that is built into Amarok. Suggestions are to create an Amarok plugin, or to use an interface to the Amarok database files.

There is a playlist->save playlist as menu option which may help you here - it saves as the fairly standard m3u format. If you have a directory full of tagged mp3 files, then the m3u can be used to lookup the rest of the tag info from the mp3 files with a tag extractor, like mp3info.

In fact it's not that complicated:

1) Configure Amarok to use MySQL to store it's database data (it's in "Preferences")
2) Install the MySQL Query Browser (Openoffices MySQL Support seems to be broken)
3) Open Query Browser and execute "SELECT * FROM tags"
4) Choose "File->Export Resultset->as Excel Worksheet"
5) Open this sheet in Openoffice Calc and format it like you need it (choose "Seperated by: Comma"

Sorry, use "CSV", not Excel. (Just tested it, when choosing Excel the queary browser crashed).

Interesting. Is there an equivalent plugin to work with a sqlite database instead?

http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net can, as far as I know, do the very same.
Unfortunately it's only available in Ubuntu Hardy Heron, so you will have to compile it from source, or you can try to install the hardy package (if you're brave ;-)

I have a large Amarok collection (over 1000 albums w/ covers).

What is the advantage/disadvantage/risk of switching from sqllite to MySQL in my preferences?