From sophom at gmail.com  Thu Dec 15 00:07:45 2005
From: sophom at gmail.com (sopho metsis)
Date: Thu Dec 15 00:08:18 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
Message-ID: <758a15a30512142107if028e9el9c73634801241cf2@mail.gmail.com>

Hi guys,

I've just spent several hours over the course of a couple of days and can't
figure this out. I'm trying to get xprint to work so I can print greek web
pages properly. Actually I'm trying to "print" them to pdf or a ps file. I
can get everything to work great with english web pages but not greek.

The story:
I'm running fedora 4.
Installed xprint, xplsprinters showed me my printers and got the
xphelloworld to print to a pdf file just fine
I found out that the FC4 mozilla does not support xprint.
I rebuilt mozilla from scratch with gtk2
I can print using xprint from the new mozilla 1.7.12 build. English pages
work great greek pages don't.
Note that I have the MgOpen greek fonts installed which look fabulous with
mozilla and xft.
I did a ps -ef |grep Xprt and I did not see the mg fonts in my -fp path
which was setup by default by /etc/init.d/xprint
I googled around abit and found out about ttmkfdir and mkfontdir I ran those
two in the MgOpen font dir and created a .scale and .dir file. They seem
reasonable although one seems to be a copy of the other.
I did a /etc/init.d/xprint restart. The mgopen dir is now in the  -fp path
I started up mozilla again printed again and it almost makes no difference
when viewing the pdf file.
I have a screenshot of what mozilla looks like with greek fonts here (This
is a sample of what I want to print):
http://www.kellyandsopho.com/xprint/enet.png
The resulting pdf file (from /tmp/Xprintjobs):
http://www.kellyandsopho.com/xprint/enet.pdf

Currently if I do ps -ef |grep Xprt I get
root      4634  4633  2 Dec14 pts/1    00:01:02 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xprt -ac -pn
-nolisten tcp -audit 4 -fp
/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/bitstream-vera,/usr/share/fonts/default/ghostscript,/usr/share/fonts/mgopen,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
:33

Can someone give me a clue? This is driving me nuts. Please...

Thanks,

Sopho

PS I use evince or xpdf to display the file.
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From jstumpel at planet.nl  Thu Dec 15 09:39:54 2005
From: jstumpel at planet.nl (Jan Willem Stumpel)
Date: Thu Dec 15 03:40:56 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
In-Reply-To: <758a15a30512142107if028e9el9c73634801241cf2@mail.gmail.com>
References: <758a15a30512142107if028e9el9c73634801241cf2@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <43A12BDA.6050407@my.home>

sopho metsis wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> I've just spent several hours over the course of a couple of days and 
> can't figure this out. I'm trying to get xprint to work so I can print 
> greek web pages properly. Actually I'm trying to "print" them to pdf or 
> a ps file. I can get everything to work great with english web pages but 
> not greek.
> 
> [..]
> 
> Can someone give me a clue? This is driving me nuts. Please...

Looks like your Mozilla does not have xprint support after all. Can you 
see printers called <something>@:33 in the mozilla print dialog?

Regards, Jan
From sopho at alum.wpi.edu  Thu Dec 15 08:08:56 2005
From: sopho at alum.wpi.edu (Sophocles Metsis)
Date: Thu Dec 15 08:09:32 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
In-Reply-To: <43A12BDA.6050407@my.home>
References: <758a15a30512142107if028e9el9c73634801241cf2@mail.gmail.com>
	<43A12BDA.6050407@my.home>
Message-ID: <758a15a30512150508j227327b1se05130d54118064@mail.gmail.com>

I certainly  can although I can see why you think it's not working. It looks
like mozilla would print if I didn't have xprint. The xprint pdf printer at
:33  is what I print to. The pdf I put up was from /tmp/Xprintjobs. I also
noticed that the pdfs produced with the missing greek are fairly smaller
than the ones I tried with english. Could there be a  problem with the
pdf/ps printers in xprint? Should attempt to get a real printer to print to
or is printing to pdf/ps just as good as a printer for everyone?

Thanks,
Sopho

On 12/15/05, Jan Willem Stumpel <jstumpel@planet.nl> wrote:
>
> sopho metsis wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I've just spent several hours over the course of a couple of days and
> > can't figure this out. I'm trying to get xprint to work so I can print
> > greek web pages properly. Actually I'm trying to "print" them to pdf or
> > a ps file. I can get everything to work great with english web pages but
> > not greek.
> >
> > [..]
> >
> > Can someone give me a clue? This is driving me nuts. Please...
>
> Looks like your Mozilla does not have xprint support after all. Can you
> see printers called <something>@:33 in the mozilla print dialog?
>
> Regards, Jan
>
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From jstumpel at planet.nl  Thu Dec 15 16:02:30 2005
From: jstumpel at planet.nl (Jan Willem Stumpel)
Date: Thu Dec 15 10:03:47 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
In-Reply-To: <758a15a30512150508j227327b1se05130d54118064@mail.gmail.com>
References: <758a15a30512142107if028e9el9c73634801241cf2@mail.gmail.com>
	<43A12BDA.6050407@my.home>
	<758a15a30512150508j227327b1se05130d54118064@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <43A18586.6080603@my.home>

Sophocles Metsis wrote:
> I certainly  can although I can see why you think it's not working.
> It looks like mozilla would print if I didn't have xprint. The xprint
> pdf printer at :33  is what I print to. The pdf I put up was from 
> /tmp/Xprintjobs. I also noticed that the pdfs produced with the
> missing greek are fairly smaller than the ones I tried with english.

Ah, yes, I should have looked at your pdf more closely. It has 3 pages,
and it does show some Greek (but only sporadically). xprint is working
on your system, obviously.

> Could there be a  problem with the pdf/ps printers in xprint? Should
> attempt to get a real printer to print to or is printing to pdf/ps
> just as good as a printer for everyone?

xprint is unfortunately full of bugs. At the moment printing to "ps"
files is out of the question, see e.g.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4307
or
http://xprint.mozdev.org/pipermail/xprint/2005-September/000507.html

So now it seems that generating "pdf" files also does not work OK (at 
least for some non-Latin html pages). I could reproduce your bug by 
printing to a pdf from http://www.enet.gr/online/online. BTW in my case 
the pdf's do not go to /tmp/Xprintjobs but to ~/Xprintjobs.

On the other hand printing on paper, using a real printer, still works 
mostly OK. In my case, the header of the enet.gr page is printed on a 
separate sheet of paper, but maybe this is somehow by design -- the 
"print preview" does the same thing. But printing to file, whether ps or 
pdf, does not work properly. I do not know why. Maybe xprint bends the 
rules of PostScript in some way.

The author of xprint, alas, has not responded to anything on this list 
since April. And it seems that nobody else understands xprint well 
enough to fix its bugs.

Regards, Jan

From dparsons at debian.org  Fri Dec 16 12:47:14 2005
From: dparsons at debian.org (Drew Parsons)
Date: Thu Dec 15 20:49:08 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
In-Reply-To: <43A18586.6080603@my.home>
References: <758a15a30512142107if028e9el9c73634801241cf2@mail.gmail.com>
	<43A12BDA.6050407@my.home>
	<758a15a30512150508j227327b1se05130d54118064@mail.gmail.com>
	<43A18586.6080603@my.home>
Message-ID: <1134697634.15582.6.camel@pug.anu.edu.au>

On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 16:02 +0100, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:
> Sophocles Metsis wrote:

> So now it seems that generating "pdf" files also does not work OK (at 
> least for some non-Latin html pages). I could reproduce your bug by 
> printing to a pdf from http://www.enet.gr/online/online. BTW in my case 
> the pdf's do not go to /tmp/Xprintjobs but to ~/Xprintjobs.
> 

I tested this web site too.  In my case the pdf output is the same as
the paper output. The header and footer are being printed on separate
pages but apart from that the main text prints ok on the second of the
three pages. I can also print my pdf file to paper, it produces the same
3 pages as printing directly from Firefox.


> Maybe xprint bends the rules of PostScript in some way.
> 

Yes, I fear this may be the case. Unfortunately you're right, I don't
understand the Xprint internals well enough to fix them.

Drew

From sophom at gmail.com  Mon Dec 19 17:11:36 2005
From: sophom at gmail.com (sopho metsis)
Date: Mon Dec 19 17:12:29 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
In-Reply-To: <43A18586.6080603@my.home>
References: <758a15a30512142107if028e9el9c73634801241cf2@mail.gmail.com>
	<43A12BDA.6050407@my.home>
	<758a15a30512150508j227327b1se05130d54118064@mail.gmail.com>
	<43A18586.6080603@my.home>
Message-ID: <758a15a30512191411g5cb5dc5fs472cff7245538e8c@mail.gmail.com>

Hello,
This weekend I hooked up a real printer and web pages with Greek print
flawlessly using xprint. There certainly is a difference when using the pdf
drivers or a real printer. One thing I did notice was that the printouts
from xprint use a different font than mozilla uses on the screen. I use a
sans-serif font on the screen and xprint uses a serif font when it prints.
Other than that the printing is excellent.

Thanks for the help,

Sopho

On 12/15/05, Jan Willem Stumpel <jstumpel@planet.nl> wrote:
>
> Sophocles Metsis wrote:
> > I certainly  can although I can see why you think it's not working.
> > It looks like mozilla would print if I didn't have xprint. The xprint
> > pdf printer at :33  is what I print to. The pdf I put up was from
> > /tmp/Xprintjobs. I also noticed that the pdfs produced with the
> > missing greek are fairly smaller than the ones I tried with english.
>
> Ah, yes, I should have looked at your pdf more closely. It has 3 pages,
> and it does show some Greek (but only sporadically). xprint is working
> on your system, obviously.
>
> > Could there be a  problem with the pdf/ps printers in xprint? Should
> > attempt to get a real printer to print to or is printing to pdf/ps
> > just as good as a printer for everyone?
>
> xprint is unfortunately full of bugs. At the moment printing to "ps"
> files is out of the question, see e.g.
>
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4307
> or
> http://xprint.mozdev.org/pipermail/xprint/2005-September/000507.html
>
> So now it seems that generating "pdf" files also does not work OK (at
> least for some non-Latin html pages). I could reproduce your bug by
> printing to a pdf from http://www.enet.gr/online/online. BTW in my case
> the pdf's do not go to /tmp/Xprintjobs but to ~/Xprintjobs.
>
> On the other hand printing on paper, using a real printer, still works
> mostly OK. In my case, the header of the enet.gr page is printed on a
> separate sheet of paper, but maybe this is somehow by design -- the
> "print preview" does the same thing. But printing to file, whether ps or
> pdf, does not work properly. I do not know why. Maybe xprint bends the
> rules of PostScript in some way.
>
> The author of xprint, alas, has not responded to anything on this list
> since April. And it seems that nobody else understands xprint well
> enough to fix its bugs.
>
> Regards, Jan
>
>
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From jstumpel at planet.nl  Tue Dec 20 10:33:47 2005
From: jstumpel at planet.nl (Jan Willem Stumpel)
Date: Tue Dec 20 04:34:46 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
Message-ID: <43A7CFFB.5010400@my.home>

sopho metsis wrote:
> Hello,
> This weekend I hooked up a real printer and web pages with Greek print 
> flawlessly using xprint. There certainly is a difference when using the 
> pdf drivers or a real printer. One thing I did notice was that the 
> printouts from xprint use a different font than mozilla uses on the 
> screen. I use a sans-serif font on the screen and xprint uses a serif 
> font when it prints. Other than that the printing is excellent.

It is possible to customise (per language) the print fonts of xprint,
using a .css file. Explanation here:

http://www.jw-stumpel.nl/stestu#T9.4.3

Drew, you said in your message that you have no problem generating the
pdf. How about the ps? Don't you have the problem of "huge text shown by
ps viewer"?

Regards, Jan

From dparsons at debian.org  Fri Dec 23 16:43:50 2005
From: dparsons at debian.org (Drew Parsons)
Date: Fri Dec 23 00:44:34 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
In-Reply-To: <43A7CFFB.5010400@my.home>
References: <43A7CFFB.5010400@my.home>
Message-ID: <1135316630.26599.13.camel@pug.anu.edu.au>

On Tue, 2005-12-20 at 10:33 +0100, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:
> sopho metsis wrote:
> > Hello,

> Drew, you said in your message that you have no problem generating the
> pdf. How about the ps? Don't you have the problem of "huge text shown by
> ps viewer"?

No, the pdf file views just fine, whether from xpdf or from gv.
Moreover I can produce a postscript file from it using pdf2ps, which
also views fine from gv.

I get the huge-text-in-ps-viewer problem, but only when I use firefox to
"print to file" or select the xp_ps_spooldir printer, generating the
postscript directly.  My pdf files (printed from xp_pdf_spooldir) are
okay.  I might jokingly suggest subverting Xprint's postscript
generation by reconfiguring it to first print to pdf and then apply
pdf2ps to produce the desired postscript file.

Interesting to note that the header is now printed on the same page as
the main text from Firefox 1.5, which hit Debian unstable this week.
That's a bit of progress, then.

Drew

From jstumpel at planet.nl  Fri Dec 23 08:38:38 2005
From: jstumpel at planet.nl (Jan Willem Stumpel)
Date: Fri Dec 23 02:39:40 2005
Subject: [Xprint] Problem Printing Greek
In-Reply-To: <1135316630.26599.13.camel@pug.anu.edu.au>
References: <43A7CFFB.5010400@my.home>
	<1135316630.26599.13.camel@pug.anu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <43ABA97E.30004@my.home>

Drew Parsons wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-12-20 at 10:33 +0100, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:

>> Drew, you said in your message that you have no problem generating 
>> the pdf. How about the ps? Don't you have the problem of "huge text
>> shown by ps viewer"?

> No, the pdf file views just fine, whether from xpdf or from gv. 
> Moreover I can produce a postscript file from it using pdf2ps, which
> also views fine from gv.

Aha. I had tried it with Adobe Acroread 7.0. This gives problems; no
Greek letters, and problems when I try to scroll through the document
("A drawing error has occurred"). Now I tried viewing the pdf with gv
and xpdf: this went OK!

However, there is something wrong the xprint-generated pdf (printed with
gv or xpdf): the page image when printed is about 15 % smaller than the
direct print-to-printer (large right and bottom margins). Do you find 
this also? Maybe this somehow causes Acroread to misbehave.

> I get the huge-text-in-ps-viewer problem, but only when I use firefox
> to "print to file" or select the xp_ps_spooldir printer, generating 
> the postscript directly. [..]

I found that mozilla.ps generated by xprint can be made viewable by
using the "postscript distiller" program ps2ps (part of the gs
distribution). But then also, the page image becomes about 15 % too small!

> Interesting to note that the header is now printed on the same page 
> as the main text from Firefox 1.5, which hit Debian unstable this 
> week. That's a bit of progress, then.

I find the same thing since my recent dist-upgrade, but I use Mozilla
(now 1.7.12-1). It could be some other component in unstable causes this
improved behaviour.

Regards, Jan