Re: PDF printing - was: Re: Flash is open?

["John A. Sullivan III" <jsullivan@opensourcedevel.com>]

On Sat, 2010-05-15 at 15:46 -0400, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 
An upgrade to libcups2 solved the problem.  We are running Lenny which
uses libcups2 1.3.8.  We upgraded to libcups2 1.4.3 from Squeeze and it
solved the problem.  We still have a similar problem when printing from
Acrobat Standard on Windows via a CUPS print server.  On to that problem
next - John