Created attachment 85027 [details] PDF file as raw material for cupsfilter/pdftops My printer apparently chokes on output generated by more recent poppler versions (e.g. 0.24.1). It only prints ASCII text when PS generated by such a version is sent to it (appears to be contents of the PS file sent to the printer). FIles generated with earlier versions of poppler (e.g. 0.18.4) print without any issues. I have attached an example PDF file to this report.
Created attachment 85028 [details] output from cupsfilter using poppler 0.24.1 processing the example PDF This does not print on the printer (sending it with netcat), ASCII code from the contents of the PS is printed.
Created attachment 85029 [details] output from cupsfilter using poppler 0.18.4 processing the example PDF The printer prints this PS file just fine (sent with netcat)
Created attachment 85030 [details] The PPD file for the printer This is the PPD used for the printer. The alternative file in the openprinting repository does not work as well.
gs is able to render the output from 0.24.1 without any warning, so I'm not convinced this is our bug.
I sent your 0.24.1 output to my LaserJet 4050 (a PS Level 2 printer) using "lpr -l" and it printed correctly.
Thanks for trying to replicate the issue. Apparently there is some interplay with the possibly faulty firmware of the printer. The firmware is not likely to be fixed so if I could find out what changes between 0.18.4 and 0.24.1 cause my printer to not be able to print the PS, I could try and still get the printer to work. I have taken a look at the PS files, and there are some smaller differences (e.g. in %%DocumentMedia) and substantial differences between the %%Page descriptions. But I have no knowledge of PostScript code whatsoever, so I cannot make any sense of it unfortunately.
I have tried setting the PS level in the PPD to 1 (the example is attached again), but I still get the ASCII output, the first characters on the printer's output are: 'dee 99d4b2' etc. This sequence appears in the document fairly in the beginning, but I have no idea why this is the first sequence (nor have I any idea if this would be relevant). The earlier pdftops/poppler version produces output which the printer understands, I cannot find a clear description of any changes in the cahngelogs on what changes to the postscript code have been applied. Could it be there are some flags which I could use t revert to the behavior of prior versions?
Created attachment 85199 [details] PPD set to level 1 postscript
I agree with you it'd be cool if we supported "faulty" printers and we used to so it may not be that hard, but I hope you understand this may not be of the most priority to some of us since we do have other bugs that do actually affect all of ours users and not only those with some printers. This means I am probably never find time to work on this, not sure about others. Of course a patch is always welcome :-)
I understand other issues have higher priority, rightfully so. But for me it is impossible to check if the generated postscript is 'correct' in the sense of 'conforms to the Adobe PostScript level 2 specifications' or if it 'just works on most implementations' (the latter is arguably the most important thing of course). If my issue would have pointed towards some obvious error in the PostScript code generator, and this could easily have been fixed I would have been sorry if I had not reported it. I now have another printer which works fine again (this time using PS 3), the old one has found a new home (using windows drivers) to use up the last toners, so for me the issue is not as pressing anymore as well. Anyway thanks for looking at this and responding.
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