Landscape printing: OS X to linux CUPS server

[Philip Crewdson]

It does seem that the fault is with Apple. I just can't understand why they would make such a huge mistake - and get away with it. I used to think it was some peculiarity with Mac OS 10.4 and the LaserJet 6MP - our old printer. But here it is with the a brand new one as well.

The guy who's looking after our print server is convinced we were using the CUPS version of pdftops all along, so I'm out of ideas. It doesn't even seem to be possible to stop it printing duplex from the Macs!

I have found a solution though. I pick the damn thing up and plug it straight into my machine. Prints landscape fine then.

Still open to theories, ideas, rtfm-type one-liners...

Philip


> I suspect it is a design bug in Apple's print dialogue stuff. The PDF correctly sets the media box
> to [0 0 842 595], which is clearly landscape, but the print dialogue stuff sets the media to A4
> (which is portrait, it should be A4-transverse or the like, according to the PPD) and specifies
> the requested orientation to 4. On the other hand, if the pdftops filter you use on your
> print server (the pdftops from the xpdf suite) gets the option "-paper=A4" as in this case,
> the filter already changes the media to a portrait page and rotates the page content accordingly.
> You may verify this by the 2 commands
> 	pdftops -paper match printertest.pdf test1.ps
> which shows, when views with gs or gv, a true landscape page (i.e. the width greater than the height),
> and
> 	pdftops -paper A4 printertest.pdf test2.ps
> which shows a portrait page with a properly rotated content (i.e. you'd have to turn your head
> or the screen accordingly). Thus, the orientation-requested=4 results in an additional rotation.
>
> You could try the pdftops filter that originally comes with CUPS and see what happens then.
>
> Helge
>
>
> Philip Crewdson wrote:
> >
> > Hi Helge,
> >
> > Thanks for offering to help with this.
> >
> > I've put up a simple pdf, saved out of the Mac print dialogue, along with the log output (in debug mode) from both my machine and the server in two scenarios:
> > 1) using lpr on my machine to print the file, which works fine, and
> > 2) printing the file out of the print dialogue in the application (it's the same for all applications), which does the extra rotation.
> >
> > The pdf is here: http://state51.co.uk/philip/cups/printertest.pdf
> >
> > The log entries for the lpr print are here:
> > server log: http://state51.co.uk/philip/cups/server_log_lpr.txt
> > client log: http://state51.co.uk/philip/cups/client_log_lpr.txt
> >
> > and the log entries for the print from the application are here:
> > server log: http://state51.co.uk/philip/cups/server_log_app.txt
> > client log: http://state51.co.uk/philip/cups/client_log_app.txt
> >
> > Thanks again,
> >
> > Philip
> >
> > > Philip Crewdson wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > I am trying desperately to print landscape documents from my Mac and nothing I do has made any difference whatsoever.
> > > >
> > > > The problem (as discussed previously) seems to be that when printing from applications (but not from lpr) MacOS 10.4 draws the page so that it will print in Portrait orientation, and then sends the magic "orientation-requested=4" flag, which causes CUPS to rotate it again.
> > > >
> > > > http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general+v:23496
> > > > http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.bugs+v:2032
> > > >
> > > > The only thing I can think of that we may not have done is install the CUPS version of pdftops. So is this really the magic wand that will fix the issue, or is there something blindingly obvious that I'm missing? It just seems incredible that it should be so hard to do something so many people would want to do.
> > > >
> > > > Any Mac users out there want to make me look stupid?
> > > >
> > > > Philip
> > >
> > > There are known issues with a couple pf print job attributes that - in certain configurations - get
> > > evaluated twice: once sent to the IPP server as part of the IPP request, and a second time in the
> > > CUPS server's filter chain by the pstops filter.
> > > To decide if your issue falls into this category, please post an URL to both the PDF and the
> > > output of the pdftops filter you use.
> > >
> > > Helge
> > >
>
>
> --
> Helge Blischke
> Softwareentwicklung
> SRZ Berlin | Firmengruppe besscom
> http://www.srz.de