PDF printing - was: Re: Flash is open?
On Sat, 2010-05-15 at 13:50 +0000, Camaleón wrote:
> On Sat, 15 May 2010 08:52:21 -0400, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 2010-05-15 at 10:05 +0000, Camaleón wrote:
>
> >> Linux PDF "readers" are in a very good shape. In fact, I don't even
> >> have Acrobat Reader installed on my linux systems.
>
> > I thought this, too, until recently when working with companies which
> > use PDF heavily. I had always used KPDF as it seemed so much lighter
> > and faster than acroread. However, it has only a very small portion of
> > the full functionality of acroread. I had never noticed but our clients
> > did.
>
> Acrobat Reader for linux has some nice features, I agree. One of them is
> the ability to print brochures and booklets in a easy way.
>
> But is so "bloat" that I have discarded from any of my linux systems and
> use Evince almost exclusively (before Evince I was very happy with KPDF).
> On windows I try to install Foxit Reader or something similar.
>
> > It's everything from small things (like mousing into to lower left
> > corner and seeing the document size -very handy for non-standard sizes
> > such as construction drawings) to the massive printing problem that
> > afflicts all other Linux pdf readers - at least in Lenny, no pdf reader
> > could print non-default print sizes. No matter what we did, every
> > single PDF reader we tried insisted on printing to the default paper
> > size. Apparently this is a well known bug from the hours of searching
> > we did. Only acroread would let our client print their construction
> > drawings without shrinking them down letter or A4 size - John
>
> Mmmm... I'm not sure to fully understand the problem :-?
>
> I have a PDF file sized "prc5 Envelope, Landscape (220 x 110 mm)" which I
> open with Evince (2.22.2). Then I send the document for printing with any
> of our HP laserjet printers using the envelope feeder. I put the envelope
> in the tray, from Evince I go under "File / Printer settings" and from
> "Paper size" dropdown menu I choose "DL Envelope". The output is printed
> correctly, obeying the size of the printed media (DL envelope) and fiting
> the text correctly into it.
>
> Is that what are you referring about or are you (or your clients)
> experiencig another problem?
<snip>
In this case, the client had a Ricoh MP W3600 plotter although, if I
recall correctly, we had the same problem with all the printers - it was
just more obvious with the plotter. Let's say they wanted to send a
24x36 drawing to the plotter. If they send it through any of the FOSS
PDF viewers, it prints a 24x36 job but the image is always the default
paper size, i.e., the drawing would be reduced to 8.5x11 and printed in
the middle of a 24x36 piece of paper. In some cases, we sent two pages
per side - reducing and rotating the drawings to fit two per page. In
this case, two 8.5x11 images appeared on the large sheet!
Acroread is not without flaws either. Versions previous to 9.3.2 could
not see our CUPS print server's printers. 9.3.2 can see them but,
whenever it prints, it sends the default page region. Thus, if I
directly choose, say this 3600 plotter, and send a 36x48 drawing, I see
acroread has created a print job with -o PageSize=36x48 but also with -o
PageRegion=A4 (or whatever either the ppd default is or the first
PageRegion listed in the ppd if no default is defined). We've seen the
same thing when trying to send 11x17 jobs to other printers - it prints
Letter size (or whatever the default PageRegion is). We've escalated to
Ricoh but this really smells like an acroread bug.
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