922479 - PDF viewer failed to print opening parenthesis characters of some PDF documents (printer output)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: PDF Viewer, defect, P3)

Description

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

Despite some earlier attempts, someone noticed that
internal PDF viewer doesn't print certain characters on printed output.

http://www.t-engine.org/ja/wp-content/themes/wp.vicuna/pdf/ja/tef-j_20120830.pdf
http://www.t-engine.org/wp-content/themes/wp.vicuna/pdf/en_US/tef-e_20120830.pdf

With the documents above, we don't see some of the opening brackets and opening parenthesis printed on the paper. 

Specifically, in the left-column of page 3, the headers next to the photos
start with opening "[". They are visible on
the PC screen, but when printed, it failed to print (I tested this on
win7 32bit, OKI c8600 color printer, and win7 64bit Canon monocrhome laserprinter combinations.)

It is possible that the opening "[" and a few others that don't get printed may
be Japanese characters, but firefox should be able to print them no matter what the character codes are since they are rendered correctly on the screen.

What you see on the screen should be printed on the printer as well. Correct?

TIA

Comment 1

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

I hasten to add that
the pages are printed as expected if I disable internal built-in PDF viewer.
So only someone in the office who has not disabled PDF viewer noticed the strange output.

TIA

Comment 2

[Brendan Dahl [:bdahl]]

This also crashes OSX with https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/02a252a1-dfce-475e-a681-fe49a2131014

Comment 3

[Bogdan Stancescu]

Similar problems here: http://www.concurs-euclid.ro/uploadsubiecte/b7327ed76965a11d3a733119e2bbd73e.pdf

All specific Romanian characters are printed as unavailable characters (i.e. rectangles) -- that is, all instances of "ă", "ș", "ț" and their upper-case counterparts ("Ă", "Ș", "Ț").

Comment 4

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

This is not reproducible when printing to PDF. I wonder if it is reproducible when printing to paper.

Comment 5

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

(In reply to Marco Castelluccio [:marco] from comment #4)

This is not reproducible when printing to PDF. I wonder if it is reproducible when printing to paper.

Thank you for your interest on this bug.

I possibly noticed another firefox bug here.

Now I am testing firefox 95.0 under Windows 10.
Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 21H2
Installed on 2020/‎12/‎16
OS build 19044.1387
Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3920.0

When I tried to print the PDF available at https://web.archive.org/web/20130207144524/http://www.t-engine.org/wp-content/themes/wp.vicuna/pdf/en_US/tef-e_20120830.pdf

1. If I used the File -> Print path, I could only get to print the first page. Firefox did not offer to print second page and onward. Very strange.

2. OTOH, if I choose the printer icon that is shown near the upper-right corner, Firefox DID offer to print all the pages.

Marco, do you also see the same issue ? If so, maybe I should file a bugzilla entry.

For http://www.concurs-euclid.ro/uploadsubiecte/b7327ed76965a11d3a733119e2bbd73e.pdf in comment 3,
firefox DID offer to print all the two pages when I chose "File -> Print" path, and so there MAY be something particualar about web.archive.org's HTML page that offers archived files. Given that web.archive.org is an important website, if others also see this issue, maybe that should be fixed.

Back to the original problem.
To my pleasant surprise, the problem is gone.
I also printed the first page from the document in comment 3, and the problem seems to be gone there, too.

Comment 6

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

I printed the page to HP Deskjet 6980 series printer. (Actually it is physically an HP 4630 something, but its 64-bit driver is hopelessly broken and I can only print using the different printer's driver, i.e. 6980 driver.)

Wait, HP released a new driver for this printer on Dec 6 of this year.
I may want to try it out...

Comment 7

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

(In reply to ISHIKAWA, Chiaki from comment #5)

(In reply to Marco Castelluccio [:marco] from comment #4)

This is not reproducible when printing to PDF. I wonder if it is reproducible when printing to paper.

Thank you for your interest on this bug.

I possibly noticed another firefox bug here.

Now I am testing firefox 95.0 under Windows 10.
Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 21H2
Installed on 2020/‎12/‎16
OS build 19044.1387
Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3920.0

When I tried to print the PDF available at https://web.archive.org/web/20130207144524/http://www.t-engine.org/wp-content/themes/wp.vicuna/pdf/en_US/tef-e_20120830.pdf

1. If I used the File -> Print path, I could only get to print the first page. Firefox did not offer to print second page and onward. Very strange.

2. OTOH, if I choose the printer icon that is shown near the upper-right corner, Firefox DID offer to print all the pages.

Marco, do you also see the same issue ? If so, maybe I should file a bugzilla entry.

For http://www.concurs-euclid.ro/uploadsubiecte/b7327ed76965a11d3a733119e2bbd73e.pdf in comment 3,
firefox DID offer to print all the two pages when I chose "File -> Print" path, and so there MAY be something particualar about web.archive.org's HTML page that offers archived files. Given that web.archive.org is an important website, if others also see this issue, maybe that should be fixed.

Yes, this is due to web.archive.org including the PDF in an iframe.
The behavior is similarly bad in other browsers.

Back to the original problem.
To my pleasant surprise, the problem is gone.
I also printed the first page from the document in comment 3, and the problem seems to be gone there, too.

Thank you for confirming!