fonts too thick if printing from Openoffice on HP inkjet (PPD misses '*TTRasterizer: Type42' line)

[Superkatze]

Binary package hint: hplip

Ubuntu 8.10:

Steps to reproduce:
-----------------------------
Start Openoffice
select some truetype font (e.g. Bitstream Vera Sans)
write some text
print

Result:
-----------------------------
Fonts on printout are much thicker than if you export the document to pdf before printing and printing this pdf file.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

This can also be a problem of OpenOffice.org. Do you have a printer named "PDF" in your printing dialogs? If you print to this printer, you get PDF files in the PDF/ subdirectory of your home directory. Try the two methods of printing your OpenOffice.org file again, but print on this "PDF" printer. Do you get the same results?

[Superkatze (superkatze)]

No Sir. I don't have a PDF printer. How do I create one? (I'm using KDE 4.1 as my desktop).

[Superkatze (superkatze)]

Ah, I think I found it out: I just created a PDF printer using "spadmin" and after printing to this printer the fonts in the resulting PDF are as thick as if printed to my printer directly.

So do you think this is a problem of OpenOffice.org?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Yes. It seems that the printing function produces too thick fonts and "Export to PDF" works correctly.

Moving to OpenOffice.org ...

[Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount)]

I can reproduce this as well.

A

[Superkatze (superkatze)]

What Printer do you own Aaron?

This is a strange bug. I just installed OOo 2.4.1 from www.openoffice.org on Debian Etch 4.0r4 and it works.

But if I install OOo 2.4.1 from www.openoffice.org on Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 6 it doesn't.

So this has probably something to do with other packages.

[Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount)]

I tested this with a Deskjet 6540. I work on the HP Linux Imaging and Printing project and I have access to a large number of printing devices.

A

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

A note, printing using Bitstream Vera Sans from OOo and converting to PDF then printing from Evince looks exactly the same with a HP LaserJet MFP 3310. So this appears to be something wrong with the printer driver. Or else this bug has been fixed in OpenOffice.org since it was initially reported...

[Superkatze (superkatze)]

Any news?

Please try to fix this bug as I use Openoffice.org on a daily basis.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

For me Bitstream Vera Sans comes out normally on a PostScript printer or a printer using Gutenprint and also somewhat thicker on a printer using the HPIJS driver. So it seems really to be a problem of the HPIJS driver.

Note that PDF is fed into Ghostscript here as Intrepid uses a PDF-based printing workflow.

[Superkatze (superkatze)]

Please please please provide a fix for this. Otherwise I cannot install 8.10 like I could not install 8.04 because it is affected by this bug too.

[Vincent Tschanz (fogia)]

I also have the same problem with a HP Deskjet 940c

[Lee Boynton (lboynton)]

I appear to be having this issue with OO 3.01 RC2, from a PPA. At least to me the text looks quite thick though I haven't compared it with a PDF print out. Any news on this bug?

[Lee Boynton (lboynton)]

That should be OO 3.01 RC1, actually. The printer is also an HP Deskjet 5150

[Lee Boynton (lboynton)]

I'm still getting this bug with Jaunty with latest updates including hplip 3.9.2

[Nicolas T (nico.nc)]

Same issue for me with OOo 3.0.1 in Jaunty and an HP Deskjet 930c printer (HPLIP or CUPS+Gutenprint driver, same issue). I can print normaly with other applications, and the issue is the same with a new user account.

[ubeagle (fun-stuff)]

Same problem for me - and only in OpenOffice. I always had this problem since I began using Ubuntu (I think 8.04)...now it's still there in 9.04 (OOo 3.0.1). My printers: DeskJet 930c and OfficeJet J6424.

[Rynn (lord-of-the-rynn)]

I believe this could be a problem inherent in OpenOffice.org, or how OpenOffice.org interacts with HP drivers. I had the same problem when printing documents from OpenOffice.org 3.1 in _WINDOWS_. I printed to an HP printer, with the latest drivers installed. I have noticed that if you export your documents to PDF and then print them, they print just fine. This is true for both Windows and Ubuntu, at least as far as I've tested.

[Jacob van der Meulen (jacob-vd-meulen)]

Same problem for me - and only in OpenOffice. I use an HP K5400 printer on Ubuntu 9.0.4 and OO 3.0.1. I got some hints on https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=505146. Especially:

>>This presumably is because those HP .ppds don't support Type42, i.e. no
>>*TTRasterizer: Type42
>>line

and

>>Ok, I found out that it seems to work if I download the PPD file from
>>linuxprinting.org and install it with system-config-printer-kde.

So I downloaded the PPD file from linuxprinting.org and replaced the content of /etc/cups/ppd/Officejet-Pro-K5400.ppd with the content of the downloaded file (this file contains the TTrasterizer line). Now restart cups:

   sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart

Problem solved!!!!

It seems that the cups PPD compiler has selected the wrong PPD file as I found a line:
   *FoomaticIDs: "HP-Business_Inkjet_1000 hpijs"
in the original ppd.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Thank you for finding this out!

All PPDs generated by Foomatic have the TTRasterizer line, and therefore the problem does not occur for most non-PostScript printers. HP once decided to switch to CUPS DDK for generating the PPDs, though they use foomatic-rip as filter. It seems that some (or all) of the HPLIP PPDs did not have the TTRasterizer line any more and cause the problem.

I have checked two of my HPLIP PPDs and they have a TTRasterizer line. I use HPLIP 3.9.6b in Karmic, perhaps the problem is already fixed there.

Anyone at HP, can you please check whether all HPLIP PPDs get the "*TTRasterizer: Type42" line? It is needed for all non-PostScript printers (where the input goes through Ghostscript).

[David Suffield (david-suffield)]

I added the TTRasterizer attribute to the hpijs.drv file. PPDs generated from hpcups.drv already had the TTRasterizer
attribute set.

[Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount)]

Should be fixed in the next release of HPLIP.

Aaron

[Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount)]

Fix committed upstream in HPLIP.

A

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Aaron, as we cannot accept the next HPLIP release into Ubuntu, as we have Feature Freeze this Thursday, I want to ask you whether you could attach a patch for HPLIP 3.9.8 to this bug report. Thanks in advance.

[David Suffield (david-suffield)]

Till, the TTRasterizer attribute is already in HPLIP 3.9.8.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

OK, then this bug should be fixed, both upstream and in Ubuntu.