As discussed already in Debian bugs #235592, #251067 (and elsewhere - I'm starting to lose track...), a default unstable Debian installation of firefox (0.9.3-2) and Xprint (0.0.9.final.001-3), i.e. 009.001) is no longer capable of print Debian's own home page correctly (!). The same applies for the mozilla browser too, I believe. The problem is that the main text on www.debian.org gets rendered as sans-serif, with all spaces between words removed. It would be nice to say to the problem lies in firefox (I think firefox 0.8 was still working, but that was with Xprint 009), but it's not as simple as that. If I downgrade Xprint from 009.001 to 009, then firefox 0.9.3 starts to print the page properly (serif+spaces) again. Which really does suggest the problem is ours, Xprint's. On the other hand, the reported of bug #251067 has suggested a workaround: create userContent.css (copy from userContent-example.css) inside the .mozilla (.firefox) default chrome directory (~/.firefox/default/<user-specific>/chrome). In it, place: @media print { body { color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', times, serif; font-size: 12pt; } tt, pre { font-family: 'Courier New', courier, typewriter, monospace; } :link, :visited { color: black !important; text-decoration: underline !important; } } Actually, this simpler version works better I think: @media print { body { font-family: times, serif; } tt, pre { font-family: courier, monospace; } } This causes the main text to be rendered as serif, with proper spacing. Since this fix is in firefox, it's difficult to say Xprint or firefox alone is responsible. Maybe the Xprint printing code inside mozilla needs reviewing? Since Debian is very close to releasing the next stable version, it'd be a little embarrassing if we could not print our own home page properly without special tweaking by the user... Time is short.... Drew p.s. while looking at font handling, it seems appropriate to mention Xprint bug #6306, http://bugzilla.mozdev.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6306, which can also be seen on www.debian.org (arial/helvetica fonts honoured by Xprint, but not by mozilla on screen).
Fortunately it turns out this problem is only restricted to firefox. mozilla 1.7.2 prints the Debian webpage just fine (using Xprint 009.001).
Another Debian user suggests a different workaround: remove the Xprint fonts directory, /usr/share/Xprint/xserver/C/print/models/PSdefault/fonts. When this is done, the text gets printed with proper spacing. But it is all rendered as sans-serif (even <tt> elements, which should be monospace not sans-serif). This suggests there is some mismatch in getting font information, no? Also, the original reporter confirms that he experiences the problem on mozilla 1.7.2, even though I can only see it under firefox.
We have just installed Mozilla 1.7.2 running on RedHat 8 linux. Due to other unrelated problems we had using kprinter with Mozilla 1.6 in our environment (resources issues running mozilla on linux through Xwindows supplied by Cygwin on Windows95); seemingly Win95 resources issues causing Cygwin to crash), we are trying to use XPRINT for our Mozilla 1.7.2 We encountered two problems: 1) *Mail* page headers and footers were missing spaces and numerals. Utilizing info in http://www.jw-stumpel.nl/stestu.html (Section 9 - Printing, Mozilla, Xprint) we "moved aside" the fonts directory. This solved the missing spaces and numerals issue. However, as the referenced webpage indicates it does *not* solve the other problem... 2) The message body (and message header) is being printed in a san-serif, proportionally spaced font instead of the serif (courier) fixed-width font that is a) specified in the Mozilla preferences, displayed on the mail screen, and displayed in the print preview. This (#2) is an important problem because a lot of the mail we print contains columns of numbers that have been created using fixed-width font. They are virtually unusable when printed in a proportional font. In our installation, we have been unable to find the location of the CSS file (containing the @medial print) referenced by the original poster. However, I strongly suspect that there must be another CSS file somewhere that handles the MAIL css. Any ideas on that?????? Jay
The CSS file on Debian systems seems to come from /usr/lib/mozilla[-firefox]/defaults/profile/chrome/. I think when a new user profile is created (creating ~/.firefox or ~/,mozilla), the default files are copied from here into the user's new firefox config directory. I don't know how RedHat has mozilla set up, but I imagine it couldn't be that much different. It would make sense that they have the same default profile, perhaps in their case the directory is simply empty? I'm not sure about mozilla mail, however, sorry.
Unfortunately, I am still not finding the relevant .css file for Mozilla 1.7.2 on RedHat Linux 8 so that the xprint fix can be implemented. There are no css files in /home/username/.mozilla/username/blah/ There are css files in /usr/lib/mozilla-1.7.2 (in res/) but none that seem to match the name or description given in the fix. So.... ? Meanwhile, though services says that xprint is still running, it has spontaneously become not available to Mozilla (this happened while Mozillas were running, NOT after any reboots, restarts, relogins, or mozilla starts). So now I have to figure out why xprint died as far as Mozilla is concerned. (It is still dead to Mozilla after logging out and logging back in and restarting Mozilla.) J.
Jan Willem Stumpel suggests the follow addition to the userContents.css file, in the @print section: .moz-text-plain { font-family: 'Courier New',courier,monospace !important; } This is reported to fix the thunderbird/mozilla-mail printing problem described by Jay. The !important directive is required. Further information might be extracted from files at http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.7/source/themes/modern/messenger/
I had been corresponding with Jan and I tested Jan's CSS fix a few days ago. At first I thought it had fixed the problem. I added the CSS, started mozilla, etc., printed, and the fonts worked correctly. HOWEVER, the next morning the font fix no longer worked. The CSS content was still there, but the fonts were back to their old proportional sans-serif self when printing using Xprint. This is on Mozilla 1.7.2 running on Red Hat 8, with the latest Xprint. HOWEVER, in the last couple days I have done a lot of experimenting with Mozillas preferences using the GUI (Edit, Preferences, Appearance, Fonts...) AND using Mozilla about:config. I got extremely bizzare results.... a) Using about:config I *can* PRINT the mail message body with fixed width high quality courier font. To do this I set: font.name.monospace.x-western = adobe-courier-iso8859-1 b) However, doing that causes the on-screen display for reading and composing messages to be a san-serif monospaced font -- not courier (at it had been previously). It is a good quality font for what it is, but it would not be my first choice. However, I can live with it. c) There seems to be no way to set adobe-courier-iso8859-1 via the GUI. (At least Mozilla does not know where to find that font name.) When doing it via about:config, it shows up in the GUI as "monospace". However, if you were to select monospace font (for the monospace list) in the GUI, you would get "monospace" in the about:config -- and you will NOT get the same result as using adobe-courier-iso8859-1. d) ALL attempts to set the monospaced font via the GUI have resulted in being unable to PRINT monospaced/courier. Those attempts show a variety of DISPLAY fonts, most not acceptable/readable. e) Various experiements in about:config to turn on/off: font.FreeType2.enable font.FreeType2.printing print.xprint.font.force_outline_scaled_fonts resulted in NO change in printing (or on screen). f) Experiments to define fonts for xprint similar to Mozillas definitions for postscript print.postscript.nativefont.x-western to be something like print.xprint.nativefont.x-western resulted in NO change. g) Jan additionally pointed out that when he tested using the GUI, he found that even just *looking* at the settings in the GUI (and then canceling the dialog) resulted in inappropriate and incorrect changes to the preferences as shown in about:config. Wow! What a mess. Lastly..... There is still no clue why the "To:" is missing from the mail message header when printing the mail message. I have this problem and my systems guy has this problem on a similar installation (RH*, etc.), both with Mozilla 1.7.2 AND now with 1.7.3. Jay
(In reply to comment #7) > I had been corresponding with Jan and I tested Jan's CSS fix a few days ago. .... Complimentary information: Packages versions: mozilla-firefox and xprt-xprintorg - current unstable versions a) Printing is wrong even with userContent.css fix suggested in package documentation and bugzilla in Debian and freedesktop. b) In printing a page from Livermore Labs ( http://www.llnl.gov/str/November04/Louis.html ), I noticed that everytime a quote (") or apostophe (') appears in text, the WHOLE printed line containing the quote is printed without spaces, even before the quote. I hope that could be of some help. -- A. C. Censi accensi [em] gmail [ponto] com accensi [em] montreal [ponto] com [ponto] br
Another data point: the mere fact of setting firefox fonts messes up the printing of www.debian.org. I've placed this information in Debian (/usr/share/doc/xprt-common/README.printing-problems.gz): "The printing error will start happening if you change font settings using Edit->Preferences (in particular if you set the serif font). Changing the setting back again to the default value of "serif" will not fix the problem. This is because setting the font places a "font.name.serif.x-western" entry into ~/.mozilla/firefox/default.***/prefs.js. Even if the value of the entry is "serif", it's mere presence will ruin printing. The workaround is to manually delete the "font.name.serif.x-western" entry from prefs.js. This seems to fix the problem with the Debian home page, but depending the page and language you want to print with you might find you will need to delete other font.name entries as well." When firefox fonts are removed from pref.js in this way, then www.debian.org prints fine without the spaces problem. Unfortunately, Antonio's new test case at http://www.llnl.gov/str/November04/Louis.html nevertheless still misprints on lines with ".
Here is another bizarre data point for the font-handling bugs. The bottom of the Debian home page (http://www.debian.org/) has links to other languages. For some reason, on my screen the Asian symbols (CJK) are not rendered at all, they are replaced with a box containing the Unicode number inside. When I print using Xprint, however, then the symbols are printed correctly. Xprint is able to find and handle the fonts, while XFree86 cannot. Very odd, but nice to know that Xprint is ahead this time. Unfortunately the reverse is true for mathML. Using the test pages at http://www.w3.org/Math/testsuite/ (e.g. TortureTests->Complexity->Complex1), most of the maths is rendered on screen (firefox does give me a warning that I am missing some fonts, and so some symbols are missing), but essentially none of it is printed by Xprint.
Closing WONTFIX because nobody cares about Xprint. Reopen if you plan to address this bug.
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