[cups.general] MacOSX landscape problems with pdftops

Helge Blischke h.blischke at srz.de
Tue Jan 3 09:45:41 PST 2006


Paul Ortman wrote:
> 
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> 
> Version info:
>   cups = Gentoo 1.1.23-r4
>   xpdf = Gentoo 3.01-r3
> 
> Setup:
>   MacOSX clients use CUPS' auto discovery to get the list of printers
>   and download the ppd files.  No real custom configuration is done on
>   the OS X boxes.  The CUPS server is a Gentoo linux box that spools to
>   many different printers.
> 
> Synopsis:
>   When attempting to print from nearly any application on OS X (Tiger),
>   everything except explicit landscape printing seems to work quite
>   well.  The "Preview" program shows a landscape print job, but when
>   printed it is truncated on the right side and seems to be the very
>   same problem as reported in [1].  The only program which seems to
>   print the test PDF correctly is Adobe Acrobat 7.0; it seems to have no
>   problem dictating landscape printing.
> 
>   Following the directions Helge gave in [2], I grabbed the two spool
>   files from the Gentoo CUPS server, one [3] printed from the "Preview"
>   program, and the other [4] printed from Acrobat 7.  The original test
>   pdf is available at [5].
> 
>   Obviously, [3] is a PDF v1.3 and [4] is a PS 3.0 document.  It appears
>   to me that my version of CUPS already comes with the "alternate
>   pdftops" perl script that acts as a wrapper around xpdf (as described
>   in [6], which is the best information/workaround I was able to find on
>   the lists.
> 
>   Is there some configuration on the MacOSX clients that I could do to
>   force them to decode all files to PS 3.0 instead of PDF before sending
>   them over to the CUPS server?  Even better would be a fix I can put on
>   the server side which would make all the problems disappear.
> 
>   Thanks in advance, and let me know if there is any other useful info I
>   can provide.
> 
> [1] http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general+v:20565
> [2] http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general+v:20600
> [3] http://www.goshen.edu/~portman/Landscape_bug/landscape_from_preview.pdf
> [4] http://www.goshen.edu/~portman/Landscape_bug/landscape_from_reader.pdf
> [5] http://www.goshen.edu/~portman/Landscape_bug/landscape_dash.pdf
> [6] http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general+v:20698
> 
> - --
> Paul Ortman
> 

Did you check the pdftops.conf has the 
	psPaperSize match
correctly set?

All three files are OK (both the PDFs are "real" landscape documents, i.e. the media size is
792 points horizontally and 612 points vertically. The PS file from Acrobat is a "faked"
landscape, that is, the media size is portrait as usual, and the logical page has been
translated and rotated accordingly.

All three print OK, but note that you MUST NOT specify any landscape option in the 
print command. It may be that your application(s) do both - creating a real landscape PDF and
then instructing CUPS to fake landscape printing (that is what the landscape option does).

To be sure, grab the corresponding cxxxx file from the CUPS server, which contains all the 
job attributes.

Helge

-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung
SRZ Berlin | Firmengruppe besscom
http://www.srz.de




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