[cups.development] [RFE] STR #1869: Automatic '-o raw' for non-DSC-conforming PostScript?

[John A. Murdie]

[STR New]

I find that the pstops filter emits PostScript which causes blank pages to
be printed - one for each original page - if the input PostScript is
non-Document Structure Convention conforming (see attached example file,
whose first page is printed as blank simply because the application which
generated the file omitted the '%%BeginProlog') - but I have other,
larger,  examples which print tens or hundreds of blank pages. In some -
but not all - such situations, the CUPS log file receives the message:

This document does not conform to the Adobe Document Structuring
Conventions and may not print correctly!

The problem is fixed if one uses 'lp -o raw' or 'lpr -o raw'.

Of course, if users only kept and exchanged documents in a
purpose-designed portable document format, and CUPS only ever had to deal
with applications which produced only DSC-conforming PostScript, then this
problem wouldn't arise.

We have to live in the real world, however. There are people here who have
20 years of documents in PostScript, much of it non-DSC-conforming. I've
hammered on at them for years to distill these into PDF files, and asked
them not to pass PostScript documents to, or receive them, from external
colleagues, but to use PDF instead. They don't remember. Then again, there
is much application software - some no longer maintained but still useful
- which produces bad PostScript. I've not looked at Microsoft
Windows-produced PostScript in a while, but at one time it violated the
DSCs big-time - e.g. by outputing PostScript resources on the first page
that used them, so that if one printed part of the document which used the
resource but not the one on which the resource was introduced, then the
print failed.

Unless something is done I'm going to be bothered by users of our new CUPS
installation coming to me clutching piles of blank paper, demanding
refunds for their printing costs and wasted time. Some of them will be
angry.

The only work-around I can think of is to set '-o raw' as an
across-the-board default option (how would I do that?), but would it be
possible instead to make `-o raw' automatic for non-DSC-conforming
PostScript?

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1869
Version:  -feature
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