Bug#274553: gs-esp: pdf document printing fails

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

tags 274553 + upstream moreinfo
quit

Hi Mark,

Mark Hubbard wrote:

> Package: gs-esp
> Version: 7.07.1-9
[...]
> I [02/Oct/2004:16:02:27 +0100] Started backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel (PID 894) for job 31.
> E [02/Oct/2004:16:02:30 +0100] [Job 31] Unable to get media size!
> E [02/Oct/2004:16:02:30 +0100] [Job 31] Invalid printer settings!
>
> I believe that this is the same ghostscript bug reported at Redhat
> to do with null page sizes:

Chasing down links leads to [1]:

	------- Comment #14 From Alex Cherepanov 2006-06-04 15:59:12 -------
	The patch (and analysis) is incorrect. Some printers don't
	support setting the page using numeric values but a small set of
	special purpose operators. The table look-up checks whether
	there is a predefined page size operatot to set this page size.
	When there is no such operator, "null" indicates that the page
	size should be set using numeric method.

	The patch makes Ghostscript ignore the page size of the document
	and use US Letter size for any non-standard document. This is
	clearly wrong.

	Probably, most users would prefer to fit non-standard pages to
	the paper size.  However, for the printers with expensive media,
	a PostScript error is preferable.

Do you agree with this analysis?  Are you sure it is the same bug?

Aside from that, I'd also be interested in whether the same problem
appears with current ghostscript-x.  (I am able to open PDFs with "gs
-dSAFER" on version 9.00~dfsg-2, at least).

Thanks for the report,
Jonathan

[1] http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61922