Printing problems - Gnucash 2.2.1/MacOS 10.4.10

[David Reiser]

On 24 Aug 2007, at 4:56:21 PM, Henry M. Benson wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm having trouble printing reports or checks using GnuCash 2.2.1/ 
> MacOS 10.4.10,
> installed via MacPorts.
>
> I get the print dialog, select a printer (I have three; it doesn't  
> matter which), and
> I get a popup box titled "Error Printing" that contains only  
> "successful_ok".  After
> a few tries the text turns to "too many failed attempts".
>
> Some debugging, googling and poking at cups yields a possibly- 
> offending line
> in /var/log/cups/access_log:
>
> localhost - - [24/Aug/2007:16:28:16 -0400] "POST /printers/ 
> EPSON_Stylus_COLOR_860 HTTP/1.1" 400 0
>
> which if I'm correct means that GnuCash is trying to print a zero- 
> length file, resulting
> in a "Bad Request" error from the POST.
>
> Any suggestions on where to go next?  I'm unix-literate but not  
> familiar with
> the printing stuff.
>
> btw I couldn't print in 2.2.0 either, but I upgraded to 2.2.1  
> before starting
> to debug.  1.8.<latest> with MacOS 10.3.<latest> worked fine on the  
> exact same
> hardware, if that means anything.
>
> Thanks,
> Henry

I believe you are seeing a gtk+ problem. Which version of gtk+ is  
macports using now? I thought gtkprint didn't arrive until gtk+ 2.10  
and that macports was using 2.8. But I could be wrong.

I've been playing with an experimental gnome 2.19 setup in fink,  
using gtk+ 2.11.6 (and also 2.10.12 or .14) and gtkprint just doesn't  
seem to work with Apple's version of cups 1.1.23.

If you can get the gtk+ maintainer to insert a s/GTK_PRINT_BACKENDS =  
file,cups/GTK_PRINT_BACKENDS = file,cups,lpr/ in a patch to  
Makefile.in, then at least gtk+ will always have the lpr backend. The  
lpr printer will print to the default Mac printer, even though the  
rest of the printing utility is problematic.

Older versions of gnucash and even gnucash 2.2.1 built against gtk+  
<= 2.6 (maybe 2.8) use gnomeprint instead of gtkprint. gnomeprint has  
other problems, but at least it, too, works with the Mac system  
default printer.

Dave
--
David Reiser
dbreiser at earthlink.net