Bug#1118062: cups: Test print neglects to find the edge of the printable area. And lacks documentation.
Package: cups
Version: 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
Severity: minor
Tags: upstream
X-Debbugs-Cc: debbug.cups-client@sideload.33mail.com
The text print starts with information labeled “media limits” and it
gives values in the English system. What does “media limits” mean? I
know my printer has an unprintable area of 4.2mm all around the
border. This seems to correspond with the 0.17 inches given on the
test print but it’s unclear.
To make it more clear, it would be better to expand the field name to
something like “media limits/(un)printable dimensions”. It would also
be useful to know the source of that information. Is it hard-coded by
the driver, or is the printer interrogated for those dimensions? This
is important because the information is not always accurate. Although
my manual specifies 4.2mm on all sides, the unprintable dimension on
the right side seems actually bigger.
The frame on the test print *appears* to *try* to be right at the edge
of the printable area. If that’s true, great! That is useful, but
only if we know about it. So it should be documented, ideally on the
page itself.
If the border is not trying to show the edge of the printable area,
then it is useless. It should be made to do so.
In my case, the lower line along the bottom of the frame is closer to
the edge of the paper than the other lines (in fact I think ~3mm not
4.2mm), so either there is a defect in the printer or the specs.
And because the unprintable specs are hard to trust on many printers,
the test page could do better. Why not have some lines that go to the
edge of the paper so the test print shows where the actual boundary
is?
This bug report has several wishlist suggestions but it is filed as a
/minor/ bug because of the lack of documentation.
To summarise, consider:
* Adding metric units to the “media limits”
* Modifying the “media limits” text to clarify what the dimension is expressing and also what the source of that info is
* Make the border frame match the edge of the /expected/ printable area
* Add some lines to the edges of the paper to show users where the /actual/ edge of the printable area really is
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.11
APT prefers oldstable-updates
APT policy: (990, 'oldstable-updates'), (990, 'oldstable-security'), (990, 'stable'), (990, 'oldstable'), (500, 'oldoldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-28-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages cups depends on:
ii cups-client 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
ii cups-common 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
ii cups-core-drivers 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
ii cups-daemon 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
ii cups-filters 1.28.17-3+deb12u1
ii cups-ppdc 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
ii cups-server-common 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.82
ii ghostscript 10.0.0~dfsg-11+deb12u7
ii libavahi-client3 0.8-10+deb12u1
ii libavahi-common3 0.8-10+deb12u1
ii libc6 2.36-9+deb12u10
ii libcups2 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
ii libgcc-s1 12.2.0-14+deb12u1
ii libstdc++6 12.2.0-14+deb12u1
ii libusb-1.0-0 2:1.0.26-1
ii poppler-utils 22.12.0-2+deb12u1
ii procps 2:4.0.2-3
Versions of packages cups recommends:
ii avahi-daemon 0.8-10+deb12u1
ii colord 1.4.6-2.2
Versions of packages cups suggests:
ii cups-bsd 2.4.2-3+deb12u8
pn cups-pdf <none>
pn foomatic-db-compressed-ppds | foomatic-db <none>
pn smbclient <none>
ii udev 252.38-1~deb12u1
-- debconf information:
cupsys/backend: lpd, socket, usb, snmp, dnssd
cupsys/raw-print: true
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