Printer is crippled

[gilado]

I had the opposite problem today. While printing a two page pdf from acrobat, both pages oriented portrait, after the first page printed correctly, the printer switched to landscape and printed the second page in that mode.

After that all pages would print landscape regardless of the settings in acrobat, printer dialog, etc. I could not fix it. I tried okular but it also insisted on printing landscape.

I loaded the pages, one by one, into gimp and printed from there. They printed correctly (portrait.)

I turned the printer off then on again. I tried to print a different (pdf) document.  No cigar, it's stuck in landscape.

Other formats (non pdf) print correctly.

[Almost-retired]

Looking at the web page printout d00662-001 in okular, portrait looks fine although there's lots of left/right border space.
Looking at it in landscape, d00663-001, the right end of the 3rd column text is clipped off, sometimes by several characters.  So I will kill the first job due to the cost of ink, and let the 2nd one print if it will by powering up the printer.  But it is not printing, the job is hung.  I will have to delete the job, and powerdown reset the printer to recover.

But first, a head on that file:
[root@coyote cups]# head -3 d00663-001
%PDF-1.5
%����
3 0 obj

Odd, fire up mc, use its hex viewer since the khexedit link is missing from the menu's AGAIN.  Damn I hate it when pclos gets dumbed down to winders mentality.  Ahh, recalled the name finally, okteta.  And it is NOT in the menu's.

The inverse ? marks above are, in hex:
B5 ED AE FB 0A

Better yet, okteta looks like I might be able to copy/paste, but no.  Highlighted the 1st 4 lines of its display, but nothing made it to the paste buffer.

Which is back to square one with the real problem. 

Thanks & Cheers, Gene

[Almost-retired]

I wonder what might be the common item here?  I have a Brother HL2140 here too, and it Just Works(TM) in either mode.

Thanks & Cheers, Gene.

[wedgetail]

gilado
I am happy to look at your system if you like but you must start a new thread as I would want details. A new topic really is needed as this topic is starting to get a bit more complex than I expected and I don't like getting too much mixed in here, I am sure you understand.   

Almost-retired
There is a couple of points that does not live up to my expectations. 
1.. I did not expect the head -3 to give you a pdf file, but at the same time the alarm bells are tolling very high, something from another topic some time ago.

2.. A concern you have had some cut off in landscape

3.. This may be because we are not using a test page we are using a web page that may not live up to the www3 standard or whatever the version is today. This should not have been a problem.

4.. Why do I not get the same problem, we need to take a closer look.

5.. From memory Okteta copy/paste fine when you know how to 

I will start with Okteta, if you use Edit > Copy As > View in plain text then you can go to kwrite and use Edit > Paste you may have to use the mouse, do not use ctl-c and ctl-v there is something odd and I don't remember only that  you can copy from Okteta.

Darned, I fell asleep on the job, sorry about that.  The alarm bells are giving me a headache. Now I remember.  You are quite right Firefox does not follow what I thought was the standard in Linux.  Linux native print format is Postscript not pdf,  Opera however does follow the standard and that is why I have Postscript format in my head -3 for the Opera file prints of the pclinuxos home page.  I did not actually check my Firefox print output for head -3, only asked you to do a check. Can only say lucky that I did ask you, I very very nearly decide to jump that stage too.

Summary: Firefox printing the pclinuxos home page in landscape looked apprently acceptable at the temporary location d00662-001 but in landscape d00663-001 problems.

Looking at it in landscape, d00663-001, the right end of the 3rd column text is clipped off, sometimes by several characters....

Can you be more precise here, what page is the first occurrence and what is the text of surviving characters in the line.  Unfortunately my Firefox d00xxx-001 file is perfect in landscape as far as I can see.  Until your landscape d00xxx-001 looks ok don't waste ink on it. If characters are cut off something wrong has perhaps happened in ghostscript plus filter chain. Grrrrr.

Ok there is another possibility, when you print in Firefox landscape, in options go to Advanced and check that your Shrinking ... line is not set to Crop?

Her comes a testing step, where you have better fasten your seat belt, it can get a bit confusing.

a.. with a faulty landscape d00xxx-001 file that you open in okular, and clearly see has 'cropped lines' do the following
b.. print it from okular and use okular default setting, the idea is that okular will repair the damage to a degree
c.. you will of course have another d00yyy-001 file from the print operation
d.. please do check head -3 d00yyy-001 and make sure first line is %!PS-Adobe-3.0
e.. open the d00yyy-001 with okular and check, probably won't look impressive and you will still have the missing characters

f.. Since the file has 6 pages, I suggest you copy or move plus rename the file to something easy to remember
g.. clear your printer queue completely so when you turn the printer on it will not start printing
h.. open the file in okular and print only one page.

Here is the letdown because I did not stick with a single test page but jumped to a multipage webpage, it was a gamble.

I have a Brother HL2140 here too, and it Just Works(TM) in either mode. ...

We will leave this just little longer, right now I would say yes but not what you would expect.

Now it is my turn for ZZzzz.... (if silly printing mistakes, sorry no proofread)

[Almost-retired]

I did clear the job queue, not the history, and putzt around till I got a test sheet out of it, but let me regenerate it, using cupsdisable.  Recreated it. I also looked at about:config, filtered on print and changed some page widths for the epson
from 8.46 to 8.5, but since there are about 1000 lines devoted just to printing stuff, I quit.  However there, none of the shrink_to_fit options are set true, all false.

Advanced shrinking is "shrink to fit", not crop.

Call up okular.  Load that job, it is not quite as badly clipped on the right this time.  I can see it in page 1 only, the
"PCLinuxOS Live Chat Suppo" is what I see in okular.  Page 1 of 12 printed.  head confirms its now postscript.

So cancel d00666-001, and cupsenable the printer.  That page of postscript printed well, in landscape mode, with the 'rt' clipped off the word Support just as okular showed it, but leaving a right(bottom) border of about a half inch, so it had plenty of room to print it, but didn't.

Have a good nap, I'm off to the shop to see if I can cut a thread, then cut the part off, and then make a socket I can screw that part into so I can machine it from the other end.

Thanks & Cheers, Gene

[wedgetail]

Almost-retired
I think I have interpreted your post.  Mainly, the repair worked and when you tried to print the printer did not hang up. I understand this to mean that the pdf file really was 'damaged'

I looked closer at my version of the file an it is perfect, it so happens that the "PCLinuxOS Live Support Chat" is the longest line in the whole print file as far as I can determine by running my KRuler right at the end of "Suppo".

Can you post

uname -r

better make sure we are on the same version.

Question now looming higly why do I not see the cutoff and also at what stage does it take place. At this stage I have forgotten how I intercept the print process before it goes to Ghostscript so we will try a less reliable method.

Firefox can print to file, when selecting this option there are two possibilities: postscript and pdf, fasten the seatbelt:

Power off printer

a.. Print the home page landscape to a pdf file, save it clearly marked for later to be used later

b.. Print the home page landscape to a postscript file, save it clearly marked for later to be used later

c.. Open the files in okular and check, since we probably know that okular will repair I am expecting that the files will look ok

d.. From okular print the two files to the Epson (still turned off)

e.. Check the two d00xxx-001 files with okular again (I would be happy to see the pdf file cropped, but I don't think so)

f.. perhaps do a real print

After this I think I am out of easy checks. Time to roll the sleeves up  

[Almost-retired]

uname -r
3.2.14-pclos7-gene-pae-bfs
That is locally built, basically about half the modules the default builds were left out.  I have tried the 3.2.16-pclos1-pae-bfs kernel which seemed a regression, but the regression may have been that hub I replaced.

"Power off printer

a.. Print the home page landscape to a pdf file, save it clearly marked for later to be used later

b.. Print the home page landscape to a postscript file, save it clearly marked for later to be used later"

b.. may be a problem, I don't recall seeing an option to print to postscript, so lets find out where that is supposed to be?  I even installed enscript just now, but that didn't appear to add anything to the menu's.  It appears my output choices are the 2 printers, and the cups pdf translator, AKA the print to a .pdf IOW..

I am assuming too that the 'home' page is not mine, but www.pclinuxos.com?

Been a long day, so I might not be up much longer.  Its 23:30 now.

[wedgetail]

Almost-retired
I think you misunderstood the instruction, it is the first option when you go to print in FF. You will be sending the print output to a real normal file which you name, this is not printing to the printer, to the invisible/temporary files in the print queue, at this stage.  Steps a.. and b.. does not involve the printer driver, this is more correctly termed save to file but it happens via the Print menu, arrrrggg getting convoluted. Hope you get the idea.

When you select the printer option Print to File at that stage you will clearly see the Output format options to format as Postscript of as PDF.   

Absolutely nothing new needs installing.  You are correct, when you print a page directly to the printer you do not have an option to specify format, you are stuck with the the output being whatever it is.

[Almost-retired]

I printed to file, and chose "pclinuxos-home-page.ps" and the same but in pdf.  It appeared to do about the same processing, and did generate a .ps file, but with a name so screwed up that okular can't load it.
There is also a subdir of the same name w/o the .ps, which contains all the stuff called in to make up the page.  But no .pdf was saved there.

From an ls -l of the save directory:
drwxr-xr-x 2 gene gene    4096 May 16 01:03 So cool ice cubes are jealous » PCLinuxOS_files/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gene gene   42992 May 16 01:03 So cool ice cubes are jealous » PCLinuxOS.ps

That pair of right arrows flat breaks linux since that is the over-write redirector.

I gotta go take my pills & hit the rack.

Thanks & Cheers, Gene

[wedgetail]

Almost-retired
Sorry you are not doing the right thing or you are having the CNC rumbling in your head.    
You have not convinced yourself that you have a Postscript file??? Do a head -3 on the file.  The mention of an extra subdirectory to me sounds more like a File Save as

» no this is not a double character, it is a single character, something is wrong and that character in a name where did it come from.  I have just checked and to my surprise by renaming my 120516-pclinuxos-home-page.ps to So cool ice cubes are jealous » PCLinuxOS.ps[/b] is not a problem for okular.

You say you chose pclinuxos-home-page.ps as file name and yet in the save directory you have So cool ice cubes are jealous » PCLinuxOS.ps

I am very suspicious of your Postscript file.    Since I don't run the same OS as you I have better go and check in one similar.

[Almost-retired]

You are correct in the "save file as" deduction.  Using this page, both .ps and .pdf files look ok in okular but the 'home' page when a .ps is made, then viewed in okular, is right hand clipped as before, the 'rt Chat' is missing. The pdf, in okular, is identically clipped.  A head -3:

[root@coyote Documents]# head -3 pclinuxos-homepage.ps
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%Creator: cairo 1.9.5 (http://cairographics.org)
%%CreationDate: Wed May 16 05:21:13 2012

[root@coyote Documents]# head -3 pclinuxos-home-page.pdf
%PDF-1.5
%����
3 0 obj

This should narrow it to something in between FF and the files that is common to both file generation methods. But I am not familiar enough with the current cups method to even make a SWAG on that.

And now, based on the premise that a good geek checks his email before going back to bed when he gets up to pee, fairly often since I am type 2 diabetic, I am going back to bed...

Thanks & Cheers, Gene

[wedgetail]

Almost-retired

As I understand it, you say that when you now print the http://www.pclinuxos.com/ home page from Firefox, to a file as a .ps and a .pdf then when you view the files in okular they both have cropping on page 1 3rd column. The rt is cut from PCLinuxOS Live Chat Support

As both files, the .ps and .pdf are cut this seem to indicate that Firefox is outputting the wrong data along the line. Now if that was the case I would say I ought to be able to produce the same error. I am unable to do so, I get perfect result from Firefox and Konqueror Web as well. Independent of OS I am using.

Keep copies of the two files, I am going to PM you a destination where you can email me a copy of those two .ps and .pdf files.

Reminder to myself:
Above test is not dependent on CUPS. Printing the PCLinuxOS homepage (any web content) to a file, .ps or .pdf, is part of the web browser.  So if there is something wrong with the files, cropped in this case, when viewed in Okular the problem must be in web browser or Okular.

[wedgetail]

Almost-retired
Have received the .ps and .pdf printed from FireFox and it is 'cropped' Since CUPS now is out of the picture, well ought to be. I struggle to understand.

Well try the following:

Start liveCD 2012.02 (no updating)
Install Firefox
Install Okular

Repeat the Firefox print to file (the only option now that there is no CUPS, as CUPS is not installed at this stage) .pdf and .ps of the www.pclinuxos.com.

Okular installed so you can look at the files while the LiveCD running.

[Almost-retired]

That I'll have to start by downloading the cd/dvd image which I have underway.  But in 2 hours I have to be on the road to let a surgeon/dermatologist look at my nose again.  He took a basal cell off on 1 Oct last, and I just had another session with an open sore that started out looking a bit like a pimple, but turned raw for about 3 weeks, then scabbed over last Saturday like it was healing, and that came off Tuesday & looks healed but is still a bit 'fat'.  And it still looks like infected hairs here and there yet.  So I have no clue how much nose I will come home with this time.  This is about 1/2" down from the site of the first one, which was just below the nose pad of my glasses.

I'll let you know when I have done this.  Thank you very much for your assistance.

Cheers, Gene

[djohnston]

Gene,

Here's wishing you good luck with your dermatologist. I hope all goes well.