Bug#847462: the problem is with CUPS

[Brian Potkin <claremont102@gmail.com>]

On Fri 03 Mar 2017 at 17:25:59 +0100, Francesco Potortì wrote:

> I have the same problem.  This happens with any application.  For
> example, if I just try to print from Firefox an HTML page with just a
> line of text on it.
> 
> To demonstrate the problem:
> 
> # cupsdisable pdf
> 
> - print a simple html text-only page on the pdf printer from Firefox
> - get the spool file from the /var/spool/cups: it's a PDF file which
>   looks perfect (first attachment)

So what's the problem? You wanted to produce a PDF from an html page.
That has taken place. You could have achieved the same by printing to
file from Firefox.

> # cupsenable pdf
> 
> - get the file from the ~/PDF directory: it's a bigger PDF file with no
>   text information and jagged font appearance (second attachment)

Now you want to convert the PDF file you wanted in the first place into
another PDF file. Why?
 
> This apparently has to do with the old problem of cups-pdf converting
> PDF to PS and back to PDF.

CUPS is not the problem. The problem is users not realising CUPS+the
cups-pdf backend is intended for converting PostScript to a PDF file.
Firefox does not (as you have seen) send PostScript to CUPS.

> I have an old Ubuntu Lucid installation where the problem does not
> exist.

Likely it has a different filter path through the printing system,

Regards,

-- 
Brian.