[cups.general] eps printing broken

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

I didn't follow the whole thread theerfore my comments below
may not apply in this particular case.

On Jun 29 07:57 Helge Blischke wrote (shortened):
> > http://www.gnuconsulting.com/output2.ps
....
> Then I commented out these lines in oyur file:
> <<
>    /HWResolution [300 300]
>    /Policies << /PageSize 5>>
> >> setpagedevice
> and then the file printed OK.

The PostScript file starts as follows:
------------------------------------------------------------------
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%BoundingBox: 18 18 580 649
%%Creator: HyperPlot v5.0 
%%Pages: (atend)
%%LanguageLevel: 2
%%DocumentMedia: HyperPage 580 649 75 white ()
%%EndComments
%-------------------------------------------%
%        HyperPlot PostScript Raster        %
%                                           %
%               Generated by                %
%                                           %
%         PINEBUSH Technologies, Inc.       %
%         Albany, New York 12205            %
%-------------------------------------------%
%%Page: 1 1
save

<< 
   /HWResolution [300 300]
   /Policies << /PageSize 5>>
>> setpagedevice
18 18 translate
------------------------------------------------------------------

The HyperPlot program has added printer specific PostScript
stuff ("setpagedevice") into its output.
When such printer specific PostScript is printed via a normal
CUPS filtering queue it is pure luck whether it prints o.k. or not.
Printer specific data cannot be filtered correctly in any case
by CUPS (or by any other filtering system). It can only be
printed in "raw" mode on the particular printer model for
which the printer specific data was made.
Therefore it is really "eps printing broken" but not in CUPS
but in the HyperPlot program.


Background information:

When a printing system is used which does filtering
(i.e. conversion of PostScript into printer specific data)
an application should not insert any printer specific stuff
in its PostScript output.

There are the same problems with PostScript from Java,
see for example
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=161004

There are the same problems with PostScript from OpenOffice.org,
see for example
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=80448

There are the same problem with PostScript from Mozilla/Firefox,
see for example
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324635
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=283437
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=325919#c6

I sent some explanation to Mozilla.org, see in particular
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324635#c6
and in particular regarding the Adobe's specs, see
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334485#c7


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
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