Amusing pdf print puzzle
From a website I selected a financial document which Mozilla opened
with xpdf. The screen display was perfect but it could not be printed,
that is, the file was apparently sent to the printer but nothing
happened. Using lynx localhost:631 Manage Jobs I found the job listed
as completed but aborted. Upon restart Cups reported
client-error-not-possible.
Next I asked xpdf to print to a file and found it created two documents:
a.pdf and a.ps. gv failed to open the a.ps file although it could open
the Cups testprint.ps file with no trouble and the printer had no
trouble printing it. I tried OpenOffice which could open both a.pdf and
a.ps but as raw files - i.e. showing all the postscript formating
instructions as well as the text content. Somewhere in the process the
a.pdf file was deleted.
Next, from plugindoc.mozdev.org, I found and downloaded and installed
the Adobe plugin. I went back to the website and again selected the
document. Now Mozilla opened it as a blank page. After I deleted the
new plugin, restarted Mozilla, went back to the website and selected the
financial document Mozilla again would open it with xpdf but it still
could not be printed.
Finally I used acroread (which had been installed as part of the
installation of the plugin) to open and print a.pdf which it did with no
difficulty.
Summary:
xpdf can open the document for screen display and write it to a
file but gv cannot read the file.
The Adobe plugin cannot properly display the document (blank
screen) but acroread can open the pdf file created by xpdf, display it
and send it in approriate form for printing.
All this may be stale news but I am reporting it as it was new to me and
it took me some time to find a way to print a document I needed and
could display on the screen.
Tom George
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