default CUPS printing format Re: [PATCH] fdo#44664: printer truncates Landscape orientation pages to ...

[Caolán McNamara]

On Thu, 2012-11-08 at 12:23 +0100, Michael Stahl wrote:
> replying on list because there are some wider issues with this...
> 
> this patch appears to change the default format for printing via CUPS
> from PDF to PostScript.  this was changed from PostScript to PDF in OOo 3.3.
> 
> apparently there are some printers or CUPS setups that don't work well
> with PDF as a default, the bug appears to have a long CC: list:

We've worked around this with a "toggle this option if it doesn't work
for you for some reason" (where for some reason is apparently likely to
be: drivers were developed against version X of poppler or ghostscript
which had bug Y which when fixed made those drivers not work correctly)

In conversion with twaugh I wondered if there was any way that in
LibreOffice I could detect that a given user's print system is going to
be deficient. He suggested the possibility of a hack, which I'm not
implementing personally, but I thought I should pass on for
completeness..

C.

On Fri, 2012-11-30 at 16:45 +0000, Tim Waugh wrote:

Well, there *is*, but you probably don't want to do that.

... here is how it could be done.  First, fetch the PPD for the queue.
.. Next, look through it for a *cupsFilter or *cupsFilter2 attribute.
http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.5/spec-ppd.html#cupsFilter

If any of those attributes says the driver can handle
"application/vnd.cups-pdf" or "application/vnd.cups-postscript" by
running a program to do it (i.e. any filter other than "-"), this
driver will likely *not* handle landscape correctly.  Of course, it
might handle it fine, there's just no way to be sure without testing
it.

e.g.
cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-pdf 0 foomatic-rip" -> FAIL?
but
cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-raster 0 hpcups" -> PASS
and
no cupsFilter line at all -> PASS

I don't really advise this. :-)