Mozilla Firefox

Bug #29622
Comment #63

Comment 63 for bug 29622

Revision history for this message

Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch) wrote on 2007-05-01:

#63

Alright. Well, this has been one of those issues that has been around forever—and not just in this distribution, but in any other distribution that I have used (everything from Slackware on up).

I have two printers, an HP DeskJet, and a Lexmark E240 PCL printer. Both of them print perfectly using Firefox under Windows {insert version here}. Literally, everything from Windows 98 to Windows Vista can do this correctly.

However, when I print from Firefox under Linux, the header and the footer from Firefox are cut off. This is not a printer restriction, and the location is the same under Linux as it is under Windows. It just doesn't doesn't print under Linux. There are no settings that I can find in CUPS regarding changing its perception of the hard margin, which in the case of both printers is nearly the entire page size.

The most I can say with absolute certainty is that (a) Windows gets it right, (b) No Linux distribution I have used (Slackware, Red Hat, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu) gets it right, (c) the bug is almost certainly not in Firefox, because CUPS cuts off the header on both printers such that a part of it shows up and the rest of it is clearly within the printer hardware's printable range.

Perhaps I can scan a couple of copies of things I have printed on both printers with identical settings, along with the output from print to file, and along with the same things printed from Windows. I am going to need to find some time to do that, however.

As a point of record, even the Ubuntu test page does not print within that area that the Firefox header/footer prints in; but the printer is capable of it.

It would seem, then, that the problem is really that CUPS either does not know that it can print there, or that the PPD is flawed in some way, or that there are assumptions being made elsewhere in the system that determine what can and cannot be printed. Presumably, this means that my HP DeskJet which supports "borderless" printing probably does not support that under my current configuration under Ubuntu. I've not the $$ to test that theory, though.

Alright.  Well, this has been one of those issues that has been around forever—and not just in this distribution, but in any other distribution that I have used (everything from Slackware on up).

I have two printers, an HP DeskJet, and a Lexmark E240 PCL printer.  Both of them print perfectly using Firefox under Windows {insert version here}.  Literally, everything from Windows 98 to Windows Vista can do this correctly.

However, when I print from Firefox under Linux, the header and the footer from Firefox are cut off.  This is not a printer restriction, and the location is the same under Linux as it is under Windows.  It just doesn't doesn't print under Linux.  There are no settings that I can find in CUPS regarding changing its perception of the hard margin, which in the case of both printers is nearly the entire page size.

Perhaps I can scan a couple of copies of things I have printed on both printers with identical settings, along with the output from print to file, and along with the same things printed from Windows.  I am going to need to find some time to do that, however.

As a point of record, even the Ubuntu test page does not print within that area that the Firefox header/footer prints in; but the printer is capable of it.

It would seem, then, that the problem is really that CUPS either does not know that it can print there, or that the PPD is flawed in some way, or that there are assumptions being made elsewhere in the system that determine what can and cannot be printed.  Presumably, this means that my HP DeskJet which supports "borderless" printing probably does not support that under my current configuration under Ubuntu.  I've not the $$ to test that theory, though.