[cups.general] PDFs do not Print

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Wed Mar 7 12:08:59 PST 2007


On Wednesday 07 March 2007, adfas asd wrote:
>Can anyone advise?
>
>--- adfas asd <chimera_god at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > What PPD do you use for the printer? The
>>
>> recommended
>>
>> > PPD seems to be:
>
>http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Gestetner-DSc38u
>
>> Actually, at the bottom of that page I clicked on
>> Postscript, then used the Select Printer|Download
>> for
>> the Gestetner DSc38u (the exact model we have), and
>> downloaded that PPD.  It installed fine, and I can
>> print other file formats, etc, but not pdf.
>>

Please understand that while pdf may have a few roots in postscript, both 
of which are freely available Adobe language specifications, they are not 
interchangeable by any stretch of the imagination. Postscript is 100% 
in-lined code that allows dictionaries to be used for canned procedures. 
pdf OTOH, is a totally random access anyplace in the file, language.

So what you might have to do is filter the pdf through a pdf2ps or pdftops 
utility of some sort before you feed it on to that printer.  From looking 
at the manpages here, it appears that pdftops is the more capable and 
tuneable utility of the two.

Try 'man pdftops' for how to run it.  I see that the pdf2ps is just a 
front end to ghostscript itself, and subject to whatever limitations your 
local build of ghostscript may have, and some versions have had the pdf 
code excised because there are other means of doing that conversion, such 
as xpdf and acroread.  I personally consider this a ghostscript 
regression, but I'm not the maintainer. The one size fits all is not the 
*nix way of doing things, so as long as it works, and it *usually* does 
(acroread has some output ordering problems with bigger source pdf's if 
you tell it reverse order) so we do eventually get the job done and 
looking good on the dead tree medium.

Since AFAIK, acroread, when displaying a pdf, outputs postscript when 
asked to print the file, that is what I would use, and the ps interpreter 
in the printer should be able to handle that.  But note that whats in the 
printer for an interpreter may not have been walked around in to bring it 
up to the latest ps abilities in the last 15+ years (we had lots of that 
sort of trouble with a Fiery at the tv station, with it getting a tummy 
ache and wasting lots of paper unless we restricted it to less than 20 
pages at a time, its a highly rated by non technical office dummies who 
don't know any better POS IMO), so you may have to tell acroread to not 
use anything above level 2 in its output, and to pass the fonts on to the 
printer in its downloads.  That is somewhat configurable on the print 
dialog screens acroread shows you.

I don't know if this is any help or not, hopefully it is.  But that 
printer is one that probably no one here is familiar with, so my reply 
might be a way out allowing you to make some progress.

>> > And, are you usre the printer is set up to use the
>> > correct media size for
>> > your PDFs? The recommended PPD sets the printer to
>> > ask for operator
>> > intervention in case of media size mismatch (or
>> > otherwise generate a
>> > configuration error). Is the printer configured to
>> > print an error page
>> > in case or error conditions?
>>
>> I don't know.  In the printer's settings it
>> correctly
>> describes what's in the trays, being 8.5"x11".  It
>> never sees anything coming in when I send a pdf, as
>> it
>> doesn't even wake up from sleep.  It does wake up
>> when
>> I send other file formats though.
>>
>> > PS: with only such vague information you provided
>>
>> so
>>
>> > far it is hardly possible
>> > to give reasonable advice.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but I've described all the details in
>> prior
>> emails with this same subject, and I thought people
>> had seen it.

That was in fact, pretty sparse unless one is "use it everyday familiar 
with that hardware".  You apparently are the only expert in that 
particular venue.  I can guess, and think of scenarios that might help, 
but I can't tell you to raise the cover and switch sw5 of an 8 position 
dip switch located on the 2nd card to the other position.  I don't even 
know if it has such a switch, let alone the proper positioning if it did 
have it.  That would be pure, 200000% serendipity on my part.  So we 
guess and surmise & make up stories about what we do know a little bit 
about that might help you.

Cheers, Gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
What is research but a blind date with knowledge?
		-- Will Harvey





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