Bug 574118

Created attachment 402073 [details]
example pdf to show the problem

Actually it seems that the options to pdftops are not important, because pdftops from F12 creates a broken ps, too, now that I try to reproduce it. I attached a .pdf file that shows the problem.

Steps to reproduce:

1) create ps file: /usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftops job user title 1 "" < minimalbeispiel-cups.pdf > minimalbeispiel-cups.ps

Actual result:
Looking at the .ps file, the title text "Lorem ipsum dolor..." looks ugly. Using cups from CentoS5.4, it does not look ugly.

Additional Information:
I can attach a ps file from CentOS or the Latex sources for this document if needed.

Seems like a poppler problem.

Testing with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 shows good output from 'pdftops minimalbeispiel-cups.pdf', but not with Fedora 12.

Some sort of poppler regression between 0.5.4-4.4.el5_1 and poppler-0.12.4-2.fc12.

Hi,

what does it mean that it looks ugly? Is it the pixelization of those words? Could you attach some pictures (good and ugly :) )?

Marek

Created attachment 402106 [details]
Fedora 12 and CentOS 5.4 ps conversion result

Sorry for the unprecise report. The Fedora 12 line is ugly, the CentOS 5.4 line is good.

Hi,

the problem is that poppler renders the PDF into the PostScript as a big image. So, it looks ugly when zoomed.
Upstream bug is https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21723.
I'm going to look at it closer.

Marek

Poppler renders it to image because the PDF uses transparency. When I remove the image from the PDF then it renders the text smoothly.

Marek

Created attachment 402551 [details]
pdf without transparent png

If I use a non transparent PNG, the problem still exists. I don't know, whether is helps, but the pdf is created using pdflatex and \AddToShipoutPicture* from the eso-pic package. I will also attach the results from using the CUPS pdftops filter from Centos 5.4 and the tex source.

Created attachment 402552 [details]
tex source for the pdf

Created attachment 402553 [details]
CentOS 5.4 ps with transparent png

Created attachment 402554 [details]
CentOS 5.4 ps without transparent png

Hi,

the PDF still contains SMask ("8 0 obj" included in "1 0 obj") which implies that some kind of transparency is involved yet.

Marek

(In reply to comment #11)

> the PDF still contains SMask ("8 0 obj" included in "1 0 obj") which implies
> that some kind of transparency is involved yet.
  
I see. This might come from the "\AddToShipoutPicture*" LaTeX command. I only removed the transparency in the used PNG file.

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still present in cups-1.4.4-11.fc14

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I'm reopening this bug. The problem still exists in Fedora 18 and is very annoying. I can no longer print from my Fedora machines because the output is so poor. Instead I have to switch to a Windows machine and print from Windows instead.

Can we get a date by which this will be fixed?

(In reply to John Dennis from comment #19)
> I'm reopening this bug. The problem still exists in Fedora 18 and is very
> annoying. I can no longer print from my Fedora machines because the output
> is so poor. Instead I have to switch to a Windows machine and print from
> Windows instead.
> 
> Can we get a date by which this will be fixed?

Hi John,

I can not give you a date when this bug will be fixed. It seems that upstream don't have time for fixing this.
Have you tried to prepare the PostScript file manually by converting it using e.g. "pdftops -r 1200 input.pdf output.ps" and print it then?

Regards

Marek

Are you suggesting for everything I print I go through a convoluted manual process of intercepting the intermediate pdf and massaging it?

I think perhaps there is a crucial piece of information that's been overlooked. When you print from Firefox it generates a pdf. Thus this problem does not just affect printing a pdf file sitting on disk somewhere. Given most applications seem to generate pdf for printing it means virtually everything one prints is affected by this.

With respect to Firefox printing some of might be due to the introduction of pdf.js in Firefox, not sure I understand the relationship between all the components, but have a look at this bug

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=811002

and this:

https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues/2750

While these issues are similar I'm not entirely sure general printing in Firefox is affected by Firefox's internal pdf viewer. I suspect when Firefox converts a page to pdf for printing it by passes anything related to pdf viewing. What is interesting is both problems seem to share a root cause, rasterizing to an image and then inserting the image in the pdf (or so I believe with my admitted limited knowledge).

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Woah this is BAD. 

A showstopper bug that has been open for 4 years? What can be done? 

Maybe we should start a bit of financing?

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