Bug#712015: cups-filters: cups-pdf produces ugly pdfs through its pixelated font

Thanks, Bastien

By following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems section Capturing print job data, I found something interesting.

What I did:

M-x ps-print-buffer-with-face in emacs
cd /var/spool/cups && ls -l
copy the most recently generated file in /var/spool/cups into /tmp, and play with it.

sudo cp /var/spool/cups/d00107-001 /tmp
cd /tmp
'file d00107-001' shows that it's a valid ps file
'evince d00107-001' shows me a perfect look.
Then I use ps2pdf to convert it into PDF. The generated PDF looks very good too.

Then, I go to my $HOME/PDF directory, open the newly generated PDF, _stdin_.pdf. It looks still ugly as before.
Now, I guess the problem happens when converting /var/spool/cups/d00107-001 into ~/PDF/_stdin_.pdf
Generating a fresh new error_log

sudo -s
cat /dev/null > /var/log/cups/error_log
M-x ps-print-buffer-with-face in Emacs
Because Google doesn't allow me to send error_log as email attachment, I tried converting it into a PDF file

"a2ps error_log". a2ps sends the output to default printer (cups-pdf in my case)
then I found the newly generated PDF in my ~/PDF, and it's still named _stdin_.pdf. When tried open it with xpdf, it cannot be successfully opened. Only the first half page is displayed. and the half page looks ugly. Lots of "Error: Bad bounding box in Type 3 glyph" shown in command line.
then I go to /var/spool/cups directory, the newly generated PS file named d00109-001 can be opened successfully, and it looks very good.
I convert it into a PDF with ps2pdf. the PDF looks neat too.

In a short word, all the PS in /var/spool/cups look very good; all the PDF in ~/PDF look ugly. In the attachment, you can find

d00107-001, the PS file in /var/spool/cups
d00107-001.pdf, ps2pdf output
d00109-001.pdf, the error_log

On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Bastien ROUCARIES <roucaries.bastien@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 4:58 AM, 王晓林 <wx672ster@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, it seems the attached "error_log" file was silently removed by gmail.
> It's pasted here:

Could you get the pribnt job data as explained here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems section
Capturing print job data

Could you also try the section call
CUPS error_log

Smell like a font embded problem,

Thanks

>
>
> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:41 AM, 王晓林 <wx672ster@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> As root:
>>>
>>>
>>> cupsctl --debug-logging
>>>
>>> echo '' > /var/log/cups/error_log
>>>
>>> Then print from emacs. Please attach the error_log to a mail to the bug.
>>
>>
>> A freshly generated error_log file is attached within this email;
>>
>>>
>>> Also say what printer you are using and what PPD it uses. You may also
>>> attach the /etc/cups/ppd/your_printer.ppd.
>>
>>
>> I don't use physical printer. I just need CUPS to produce PDF outputs for
>> me. In my /etc/cups/ppd/ directory there is only a PDF.ppd file which is
>> attached within this email as well.
>>
>>>
>>> It seems that by default cups-ppd use postscript 2 level only (see
>>> /usr/share/ppd/cups-pdf/CUPS-PDF.ppd)
>>
>>
>>> Could you try to replace LanguageLevel: "2" by LanguageLevel : "3"
>>
>> I found there is a line "*LanguageLevel: "2" in /etc/cups/ppd/PDF.ppd. I
>> change it to "3". And then
>> "M-x ps-print-buffer-with-face" within emacs. The output PDF is the same,
>> nothing improved.
>> I did a "sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart", then did "M-x
>> ps-print-buffer-with-face" again, and still saw nothing changed.
>> I changed /usr/share/ppd/cups-pdf/CUPS-PDF.ppd as Bastien instructed, "2"
>> -> "3". Then again "M-x ps-print-buffer-with-face", still got the same.
>> Still the same after a "sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart".
>>
>> Thanks for helping!
>>
>