[cups] Weird IP110 problem again.

Xen list at xenhideout.nl
Sat Nov 26 13:47:12 PST 2016


I posted earlier on this list about a Canon IP110 that turned out to 
print with every page shifted to the left, and I didn't know why. And in 
the end I found it did the same thing now on Windows.

It started happening when I shifted to Linux, so I couldn't really know.

So on Linux I wrote a little script that uses "gs" to shift the entire 
page to the right by what I think was 19.5 or 21.5 "inch points" 
(supposed to be x 1/72"). I just calibrated this to create equal margins 
to my satisfaction on both sides.

So I am printing to day and I have to change the ink.

I put in a new cartridge and all of a sudden the page is shifted too far 
to the right.

I print without the shift and it is too far to the left. But not as much 
as it was in the beginning.

Now after a while I find out that in fact every new print is SMALLER in 
that the thing has been scaled down.

So I spend a while to find the new left margin but then I find out the 
entire thing is smaller anyway, from top to bottom and from left to 
right.

So in the end I go to the options for the printer (I print in Okular, 
and I go to the printer settings (or real printer settings, I wanted to 
say)) and I see that it has an option for shrinking or cropping the page 
in case the page is larger than the print page.

This is weird, my printer has always been A4 and every kind of thing I 
print should always be A4.

But I change "shrink" to "crop" suddenly the page is larger than it 
previously was but close to the document on screen.

It also appeared the shrink was bigger when I shifted the page farther 
to the right, as if the shift created a bigger page that then created a 
bigger shrink.

However the PDF is not truly bigger, there is not just some extra right 
margin as if the right margin stays the same, you know.

Maybe there is a hidden overflow but I don't know at this point.

However without the shrink the page is now too big. So I can of course 
add custom margins when printing but this is cumbersome to begin with 
and...

...not even sure if it will work either.

Just for clarity and illustration this is my script that has worked so 
well for months.

#!/bin/bash

if [ -n "$1" ]; then
         echo
         echo "Input is $1"
         nopdf=${1%.pdf}
         newname="${nopdf}-shifted.pdf"
         echo "Transforming to $newname"
         gs \
           -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dSAFER \
           -dCompatibilityLevel="1.3" -dPDFSETTINGS="/printer" \
           -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true \
           -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -sOutputFile="$newname" \
           -c "<</BeginPage{12.1 0 translate}>> setpagedevice" \
           -f "$1"
fi



In okular there is no difference between the old pdf and the new one 
except for the displacement of the text, there is no scaling or 
anything. The print driver does the scaling, apparently.

So to sum it up after changing my ink cartridge (for exactly the same 
type) the printed text is _smaller_ no matter how much I shift my text 
(image) to the right now.

When I turn "shrink" to "crop" the text is LARGER but I have never used 
this option before and I am very sure that I never changed that option, 
I wanted to say dead sure here.

So apparently I need shrinking to get the page I want but it is now too 
much! The printer is not set to have any margins.

Why on the hobbity earth did this suddenly change?

Maybe I just need to reboot.

Maybe the printer reset itself in some way but it is still not right.

And it is worse now than before, I feel. Of course I can adjust the 
margin so that both margins are equal but now I suddenly have smaller 
prints!!!!

Apparently I did use a larger margin than the actual document, so there 
was some shrinking all along. It was nice for me. But nice or not nice 
does not matter so much, what matters is consistency!!!

What could have happened here?



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