https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=732442 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=732442#c1 Johannes Meixner <jsmeix@suse.com> changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |jsmeix@suse.com Platform|x86-64 |All Component|Printing |KDE4 Applications AssignedTo|jsmeix@suse.com |kde-maintainers@suse.de QAContact|jsmeix@suse.com |qa@suse.de Summary|All Postscript drivers |Applications using Qt |horribly busted |produce PDF for printing | |which can fail on | |PostScript printers --- Comment #1 from Johannes Meixner <jsmeix@suse.com> 2011-11-24 10:12:35 UTC --- Even though this issue is of course a printing related issue "application using Qt prints garbage" means that this issue does not belong to the Bugzilla component "Printing" which is meant only for the base printing system (i.e. CUPS and printer drivers). Because there is no Bugzilla component "Qt" but KDE applications are one of the main Qt users I change the Bugzilla component to "KDE Applications". There is a general move away from PostScript to PDF as the standard print job format. This change is advocated by the OpenPrinting workgroup of the Linux Foundation and the CUPS author, see http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting -------------------------------------------------------------------- PDF as standard print job format is completely implemented on Debian and Ubuntu and will soon get upstream standard
From Ubuntu Oneiric (11.10, released mid-October) on all important desktop applications (GTK/GNOME, Qt/KDE, LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, ...) send print jobs in PDF and not in PostScript any more by default. In addition, a complete CUPS filter chain to process print jobs in PDF is available and used by Debian and Ubuntu.
CUPS author Mike Sweet/Apple have decided to not include the Linux-specific CUPS filters in the upstream CUPS source any more and we have agreed to maintain them at OpenPrinting. Here we will do some clean-up and discontinue the PostScript-centric workflow in favor of the PDF workflow, meaning that the upstream standard for CUPS under Linux (using CUPS plus our filter package) will be the PDF-based job processing, letting every non-PDF input be converted to PDF first, page management options being applied by a pdftopdf filter and Ghostscript being called with PDF as input. Having this workflow we ask all driver developers kindly to not create any PPDs/drivers for non-Postscript printers which require exclusively PostScript. PPD files should at least accept PDF or CUPS Raster now. See also our driver design/packaging page. More info on our page about the PDF printing workflow. -------------------------------------------------------------------- This means that from the OpenPrinting workgroup and CUPS author point of viwe it is o.k. when applicatios produce PDF insetad of PostScript. As a consequence you can no longer print directly from applications which produce PDF in "raw" mode (i.e. without any filter in between which converts PDF to PostScript) to a pure PostScript printer (but many PostScript printers can also print PDF directly). I don't know if one can cofigure Qt or application using Qt or KDE so that they produce again PostScript by default. Perhaps a Qt or KDE expert can help here.
From my point of view this issue is not really a bug but an unfortunate consequence for particular printers of a generic upstream change in the printing workflow which is intended.
From my point of view this is the main reason why
FYI: Regarding "developers not knowing anything about Qt, PDF, or Postscript": It is really unfortunate that often application developers do not have sufficient knowledge about printing (I guess this is because printing is "no fun" and therefore printing is not in the focus of application developers). the printing user experience is often insufficient. Related to this you may have a look at http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2011-05/msg00629.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2011-05/msg00631.html (The whole "openSuSE 11.4 - Printing bug" thread is interesing.) Regarding printing issues in KDE 4 you may have a look at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181290#c27 "KDE 3 has a printing system, KDE 4 doesn't. Spot the difference.", and subsequent comments therein and http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2011-05/msg00500.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2011-05/msg00521.html -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.