298775 - Page Setup controls inadequate and not followed

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Description

[David G. Pickett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4 (ax)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4 (ax)

This web page is my example, it is not otherwise toxic beyond the irregular
choice of font size and abuse of language and citizen that is the norm for
government documents!  :-)

I have an HP PSC 750 600 dpi inkjet printer, which prints with minimum inch
margins .07 top, .25 side, .46 bottom.  My display is set for 1024x768 with
medium 16 bit color, windows classic style, windows standard color scheme, font
size normal. When  I got to set up printout for a very full page starting with
text size normal and using custom=68%, there are several disappointments:

1. I cannot set up more finely than +/- .1 inch, so I cannot hit my minimum margins.

2. Apparently, the margins are added to the minimums, which is counter-intuitive
and against established good practice.

3. If I set them all to zero, the header and footer disappear with no warning. 
Of course, MS Office XP Pro Word renders header and footer into the unprintable
areas, and brainlessly even renders this accurately in print preview, so I
suppose it is tradional and established practice to abuse the user in the area
of the header and footer.  :-)

4. While the header and footer use the full width, the page is rendered further
indented, over which I seem to have no control.

5. Even with just a .2 inch top margin (the minimum to have a header), the
header is .2+ inches away from the header, which wastes space and makes the
disappearing header just a pain.

6. With a zero top margin, the printout does not start anywhere near the top of
the page.

7. BTW, the print preview has pixel-clipped characters in the document body all
down the right side, no matter what the margin setting, and even though the
header extends father right without any such clipping.

While some of these may be similar to, or overlap, other reports, I felt it
might be nice to give a really tight and complete description of the problems in
this area of a new browser version.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set up PC as described
2. Go to page
3. Adjust print settings as described, and review print preview (which seems
accurate, hopefully except for the clipped characters on the right edge).

Actual Results:  
I sighed, decided to print in MS Word in teh future and to submit a bug.

Expected Results:  
Allowed setup to .001 inch; offered to fix settings outside the current
printer's capabilities or to select another printer; offered explicit setting to
drop or include each of: header, footer; laid out the text using the full
canvas; presented doc without clipping characters in both the print preview or
the print.  I suppose it is a bit too much to expect for the browser to let you
choose the font and gutter for the header and footer, and to show in print setup
the available canvas, the space above the header, the space for the header, the
space below the header the remaining space for the body, the space above the
footer, the space for the footer, and the space below the footer, maybe like in
a mechanical drawing (blueprint).

It's a common enough way for browsers to come up short, IE6 was really bad for a
while, so much so that I printed a lot from Netscape, which makes the Mozilla
Firefox failure all the more of a real surprise.  Oh, well, there's still Opera,
but I don't like their print preview paradigm (too much work to turn off, and
not nice enough to live in, like I do with ms word 'print layout' view, except
when the doc gets so unpresentable I have to do surgery in 'normal')!

While you're in there, buttons to go to print preview from print setup and vice
versa are real nice.  You half got it!

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.