[cups.bugs] [HIGH] STR #1451: PDF file cannot be printed N-up

[Till Kamppeter]

[STR New]

See

http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=21388

I got the attached PDF file (test1.pdf, generated with Acrobat Distiller
under Windows) from the mentioned Mandriva bug report and tried to print
it 2-up and 4-up (with the "number-up" option of CUPS) on a PostScript
printer. Under CUPS 1.1.23 (Mandriva Linux 2006) this works without
problems. With the current CUPS 1.2 (rev 5201 on Cooker) it does not work.
The pages are correctly ordered, but at the right and at the bottom of
each page there are around 20% cut off in case of 2-up and 40% cut off in
case of 4-up. Adding the "fitplot" option does not change anything and
setting Landscape orientation lets the upper instead of the lower border
being cut off.

Usually, n-up (and also other reordering features of the "pstops" filter
of CUPS) are prone to fail when feeding in non-DSC-conforming PostScript,
but in this case the PostScript comes from CUPS' "pdftops"  filter which
should produce "good" PostScript.

Or can there be "bad" PDFs which cannot be converted to "good" PostScript
(and that even produced by Adobe software)? Would be bad for a switchover
from PostScript to PDF as standard print job transfer format.

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1451
Version: 1.2-current
Attachment: http://www.cups.org/strfiles/1451/test1.pdf