number-up > 1 incompatibel with foomatic? [was: Blank pages when printing Mozilla PostScript file with 2 pages/sheet on postscript printer ]

[Helge Blischke]

Well, it is sort of a foomatic issue: for some reason (I don't know
why) Ghostsceript is called with the pswrite device, and that inserts
the line
---snip---
595 842 /a4 setpagesize
---snip---
into the page setup section of every page. The "setpagesize" in turn
calls (in case of level 2 or 3) the setpagedevice operator, which 
in turn completely defeats CUPS' number-up stuff: the page size for
the logical page is reset to the original (A4 in this case), and the
current page is erased, thus you get a blank page.

I hope the foomatic guys will read this.

Helge


Hartvig Ekner wrote:
> 
> I put a new trace-file at:
> 
>     http://www.ekner.info/traces.tgz
> 
> This time it is a .tgz file due to limitations at my hosting company :-) It contains
> three files: The original mozilla.ps output (captured with print-to-file from mozilla)
> and two traces captured by replacing foomatic-rip with a small script. The two foomatic-rip
> traces are done with 1-up printing (TRACE.1up) and 2-up printing (TRACE.2up). (Note that
> the argument dumps in the first few lines of each trace need to be removed to get clean postscript
> data).
> 
> I can "GGV" the TRACE.1up trace, and it looks as expected. When opening the TRACE.2up trace,
> I can see that GGV draws something, and then it immediately after clears it, so that I'm looking
> at a blank page (which is also what the printer outputs). So I think the answer lies within the
> TRACE.2up file. Doing a diff between these two trace files reveals:
> 
> [hje at hje-6 tmp]$ diff TRACE.1up TRACE.2up
> 2c2
> < 24
> ---
>  > 25
> 6c6
> < outputorder=normal number-up=1 page-border=single nowrap position=top-left Duplex=Notcapable PageSize=A4 Resolution=default PreFilter=No
> ---
>  > outputorder=normal number-up=2 page-border=single nowrap position=top-left Duplex=Notcapable PageSize=A4 Resolution=default PreFilter=No
> 16c16
> < %%CreationDate: 2004/10/26 11:19:03
> ---
>  > %%CreationDate: 2004/10/26 11:19:33
> 97a98,101
>  > userdict/ESPsave save put
>  > 24.0 48.0 translate
>  > 547.0 0.0 translate 90 rotate
>  > 0.0 1.1 translate 0.647 0.647 scale
> 99,100c103,104
> < 0.240 setlinewidth 0 setgray newpath
> < 26.2 50.2 542.5 765.5 ESPrs
> ---
>  > 0.371 setlinewidth 0 setgray newpath
>  > 3.5 3.5 588.0 835.0 ESPrs
> 101a106
>  > 0 0 595.0 842.0 ESPrc
> 1251a1257,1264
>  > userdict /ESPsave get restore
>  > userdict/ESPsave save put
>  > 24.0 48.0 translate
>  > 547.0 0.0 translate 90 rotate
>  > 385.0 1.1 translate 0.647 0.647 scale
>  > 0 0 595.0 842.0 ESPrc
>  >
>  > userdict /ESPsave get restore
> 1252a1266
>  > 595.0 0.0 translate 90 rotate
> 
> But I'm not post-script capable enough to see what the problem is.....
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> /Hartvig
> 
> Helge Blischke wrote:
> > Well, your sample file prints ok here, both normal and with the
> > number-up=2 option. Moreover, I printed some web pages from mozilla
> > with this option successfully.
> > How is your mozilla printing configured? I use "kprinter -stdin"
> > as printer setup in mozilla, and this works with both CUPS 1.1.18
> > and 1.1.19 (the versions in use at our site).
> >
> > Perhaps you could try to intercept the data that go into the
> > foomatic RIP (e.g. temporarily replace foomatic-rip by a script
> > that simply dumps the standard input to a file) and post that.
> >
> > You see, I've no proper idea what the issue might be (yet).
> >
> > Helge

-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung
SRZ Berlin | Firmengruppe besscom
http://www.srz.de
tel: +49 30 75301-360