[cups] turning off fit-to-page [work-around]

[Gary Dale]

On 2024-01-10 01:28, Jörg Thümmler wrote:
> Am 09.01.24 um 16:36 schrieb Gary Dale:
>> On 2024-01-04 09:32, Gary Dale wrote:
>>> I'm running Debian/Bookworm on an AMD64 server. I'm usually trying 
>>> to print to a HP CP1215 colour laser printer.
>>>
>>> CUPS has been a nightmare for the past year, but I get around it a 
>>> little by printing from the command line. My workstation can't seem 
>>> to print to the server's printers anymore so I have been working 
>>> around it by creating a PDF or image file and using lp to print from 
>>> the server.
>>>
>>> However this doesn't work when I have a document that extends into 
>>> the printer margins. Then lp shrinks the document to fit the 
>>> margins, which is not what I want. I want the printer to crop at the 
>>> margins so I get as much of the document as the printer allows 
>>> without any alterations and without having to create a separate 
>>> document for each printer I might use.
>>>
>>> This brought me to the barely documented option "fit-to-page" which 
>>> (apparently) is turned on by default so that iOS users can air print 
>>> their photos. I supposedly should be able to override this by 
>>> setting fit-to-page=off. I supposed to be able to do this using the 
>>> lpoptions command or specifying it on the lp command using "-o 
>>> fit-to-page=off".
>>>
>>> Neither worked.
>>>
>>> If I use lpoptions as either my regular user or as root, it has no 
>>> impact - using loptions -p <queue name> -o fit-to-page=off or 
>>> omitting the -p <queue name> - all 4 variants fail. However I did 
>>> note some odd behaviour setting the lpoptions. When I list the 
>>> options, fit-to-page never shows. However if I look at the lpoptions 
>>> file, the global one only contains the default queue name while the 
>>> local user one appends "fit-to-page-off=true" to the default line.
>>>
>>> If I put the -o fit-to-page=off in the lp command, the jpeg file 
>>> ends up printing over 4 pages, with about 1/4 of the image centred 
>>> on each page - possibly full size but not what I expected or wanted 
>>> or can use.
>>>
>>> I will also note that running "lpoptions -l" never shows the 
>>> "fit-to-page" setting but it does confirm that my default paper size 
>>> is "letter". Nor is there a "fit to page" setting through the CUPS 
>>> printer management page (<servername>:631). However, I used to print 
>>> unscaled documents to this printer (just not through Gwenview which 
>>> doesn't have a print full size & crop option, which was why I 
>>> originally started trying to use lp).
>>>
>>> Is there a way I can get this to work?
>>>
>> I found one way to make this work - I fired up a Windows 10 virtual 
>> machine and printed from it. It's shameful that CUPS developers are 
>> trying to force everyone to conform to their code while Microsoft 
>> still accepts that people use older hardware. This is the opposite of 
>> what Linux is about.
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://lists.cups.org/mailman/listinfo/cups
>
> Hi,
>
> fully agree. Although I would have used a VM with a linux using elder 
> cups version, maybe a tiny one... but's a shame anyway...


I don't have a VM running Linux with a graphical desktop. I have some 
Windows VMs for various versions of Windows (XP, XP64, 7 and 10)  that I 
use mainly to check that web pages work and to run my tax software, 
Seemed simpler to fire up one them than to create a new one.