PDF weirdness

[Steven Stern]

On 10/28/2012 03:42 PM, Robert Heller wrote:
> At Mon, 29 Oct 2012 07:01:04 +1100 Andrew Greig <pushin.linux at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>> On Sun, 2012-10-28 at 09:12 -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
>>> At Sun, 28 Oct 2012 23:48:43 +1100 Andrew Greig <pushin.linux at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, 2012-10-28 at 09:44 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
>>>>> On 28 October 2012 09:35, Andrew Greig <pushin.linux at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I am running GC 2.4.11 under a Suse 12.1 64bit system.  The program runs
>>>>>> fine, and I have just done a run of Invoices as pdfs and attached and
>>>>>> sent them to my clients.  I needed to run an AR report for a couple of
>>>>>> delinquent customers.  Tried printing the reports directly, and the only
>>>>>> stuff that printed was the Table frames and the blue hyperlinks, no
>>>>>> black text was printed.  So I saved the 2 reports as PDFs and when I
>>>>>> opened them the tables were fully populated with black text and blue
>>>>>> hyperlinks (just as in the HTML format previously).  On printing one of
>>>>>> the PDFs from evince, and later from Okular, I had the same issue - only
>>>>>> the rulings for the table cells and the Blue hyperlinks were printed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Can I just check what you are saying.  Gnucash has generated pdf files
>>>>> that look fine in evince and okular but do not print correctly?  Have
>>>>> you considered that it may be an issue with your printing rather than
>>>>> the pdf files?  Have you tried printing on a different PC and printer?
>>>>>
>>>>> It might be useful to put the files through a pdf validator [1]
>>>>>
>>>>> Colin
>>>>>
>>>>> [1] http://www.pdf-tools.com/pdf/validate-pdfa-online.aspx  (I can't
>>>>> vouch for whether this is any good).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Colin,
>>>>
>>>> I ran the pdf validator on the pdf I created in the Print dialog.  It
>>>> returned that the pdf was pdf1.5  so it appears to be OK.
>>>>
>>>> Thr reason that I do not suspect the printer is that the table cells
>>>> were all defined cleanly with black borders, and the only text that
>>>> printed was hypertext.  
>>>>
>>>> I have never encountered anything like this before.
>>>
>>> What kind of printer is it (make, model) and what printing software are
>>> you using (version of CUPS, etc.)?  It probably *is* your printing
>>> software, probably a font or color problem of some sort.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Andrew
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> gnucash-user mailing list
>>>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>>>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>>>> -----
>>>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>>>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>>>>
>>>>                                             
>>>
>> Hi Robert,
>>
>> Thanks for your reply,
>>
>> Printer is an HP PhotoSmart C5280 All-in-one
>> CUPS 1.5
>>
>> For regular printing it works fine and the scanner works very well.
>>
>> hplip 3.11.10-3.1.2 is is installed (3 packages)
> 
> All I can say is that at the Wendell Free Library on a CentOS 5 system
> with a HP all-in-one (OfficeJet) is that we have our own 'PDF
> weirdness' (not related to Gnucash at all): printing random PDF's from
> Adobe's PDF reader fails (the print job crashes). The same PDF prints
> just fine using evince, xpdf, or being converted to Postscript by
> Ghostscript.  Adobe's PDF reader can print just fine to an *older* HP
> laser printer (with native Postscript).  It is not the PDF files, but
> the software involved in converting it to Postscript (Adobe's Reader)
> and/or converting the Postscript to HP Inkjet raster format (eg
> Ghostscript & hplip / CUPS).  
> 
> I suspect you are seeing a simular sort of bug here.  It *might* be
> related to something Gnucash is (not?) doing, possibly  related to
> fonts, since the problem seems to be related to text. And might just be
> a Ghostscript and/or hplip bug.
> 
>>
>> Andrew Greig
>>
>>                                                  
> 
I'll second that. Printing to an HP 8500 from recent versions of Adobe
Reader fails most of the time on Fedora 17, but evince works.  Also, if
I open the PDF file with Chrome, I can print it.  I think it's some bad
interaction between Adobe and CUPS.

-- 
-- Steve