102485 - Cannot print XUL page

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Description

[Roland Mainz]

2001-09-28-08-trunk Solaris7+/Linux + Win32 nightly build.
The given example URL results in a blank page (title "about: blank") ...

Comment 1

[rods (gone)]

David, I didn't think we where ever going to allow this, were we?

Comment 2

[Roland Mainz]

rods wrote:
> David, I didn't think we where ever going to allow this, were we

Er... why not ?
I can print pages with HTML form controls. 
It should be possible to print pages with XUL components, too (navigator.xul may
be a bad example - but even that should work...).

Comment 3

[Andy Edmonds]

Works for me, using both file and chrome urls on XUL pages with window tags -- 
tested with 0.9.6 and 0.9.4 win2k.

Comment 4

[sujay]

Roland does this work for you now ?

Comment 5

[Roland Mainz]

1. I type chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul
2. Menu "File/Print...", selecting printer, "OK"
Result: print output of about:blank
3. load http://www.sunhelp.org/ in "embedded"
chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul
4. Menu "File/Print...", selecting printer, "OK"
Result: print output of chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul

But I want to print the chrome+content - not only the content alone ...

Comment 6

[Roland Mainz]

Is there any work on making XUL pages printable ?
Currently I get a "We are unable to Print or Print Preview this page."-error
dialog... ;-(

Comment 7

[rods (gone)]

need hyatt's help for this, I haven't looked into printing generic XUL, but the
TReeWidget has major problems.

All the problem stem from XUL always wanting to create scrollbars, not a good
thing  when printing

Comment 8

[Roland Mainz]

rods wrote:
> need hyatt's help for this, I haven't looked into printing generic XUL,

IMHO we should fix this ASAP since this makes the implementation of a
"Print"-functionality in XUL/GRE(=Gecko Runtime Env.) near-to-impossible... ;-(

> but the TReeWidget has major problems.

What about handing the Tree widget like normal HTML tables (splitting it over
multiple pages as neccesary etc. (e.g. make a common superclass for both tables
and tree widget and put the pagination algorithm in the superclass)) ?

Comment 9

[rods (gone)]

Roland wrote:
IMHO we should fix this ASAP since this makes the implementation of a
"Print"-functionality in XUL/GRE(=Gecko Runtime Env.) near-to-impossible... ;-(

I am not sure what you mean by this, please elaborate.

Comment 10

[Roland Mainz]

rods wrote:
> Roland wrote:
> > IMHO we should fix this ASAP since this makes the implementation of a
> > "Print"-functionality in XUL/GRE(=Gecko Runtime Env.) near-to-impossible...
> > ;-(
>
> I am not sure what you mean by this, please elaborate.

I mean if I want to create a GRE-based application which entirely is written in
XUL/XML+JavaScript - how can I implement a "print" functionality if I need XUL
widget-like features to represent the data in the printout ? AFAIK this doesn't
work yet except I restrict myself to plain XML/HTML+CSS and _avoid_ any
XUL-specific stuff in the pages, right ?

Comment 11

[rods (gone)]

Attachment: PostScript file

This is a PS file from printing the Print Setup Dialog, for some reason the two
paper orientation images are scaled small. But other than that it looks pretty
good.

So it appears that the XUL tree is the one that messes up and is why we
disabled it.

Comment 12

[Roland Mainz]

rods wrote:
> So it appears that the XUL tree is the one that messes up and is why we
> disabled it.

OK, can we then re-enable XUL printing in general (e.g. file a sepeate bug
(marking it a blocker for this one) with a patch, I'll r= it when I am back on
Sunday) and file a bunch of new bugs for the following issues (all blockers for
this bug):
- Make Tree widget printable (I suggest to use the same algorithm as for the
HTML table stuff)
- Disable scrollers in print/print preview mode
- RFE: Implement CSS2 page-* properties for XUL widgets (see bug 132035
("Support all page-break-* CSS2 properties") for references)
- Invetigate if shrink-to-fit must be adjusted for printing XUL widgets

Comment 13

[Roland Mainz]

Is there any argument in removing the code which generates the
|NS_ERROR_GFX_PRINTER_NO_XUL|-error ?

Comment 14

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Is this fixed by the patch in bug 137526?

Comment 15

[Roland Mainz]

Simon Fraser wrote:
> Is this fixed by the patch in bug 137526?

Sorry, no. That bug only removed the code which disabled printing of XUL
documents completely. Now we have to work on getting XUL documents printing
(which works mainly - except some kinds of XUL widgets cause crashes).

I filed bug 188836 ("XUL printing tracking bug") to track the further work for
XUL printing...

Comment 16

[Jesse Ruderman]

Printing XUL documents was disabled again in bug 240490 (in December 2004).

Comment 17

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

For the record, this came up at bug 1181630.  There I noticed that "printing doesn't work for pages without web content" -- for example the about:config and Preferences pages.

Now that we're "killing XUL", it's understandable that we don't want to add new features -- for example making XUL pages printable.  But maybe, as part of the process of "killing XUL", we can make these pages printable by re-writing them in HTML?

What do you think, Mark?  Should I open a bug on this?

Comment 18

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Personally, I'd WONTFIX this bug. Mozilla is no longer (and maybe never was) trying to get people to use XUL for building things.

Comment 19

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

I've gone ahead and opened bug 1181745.

Comment 20

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

I've gone ahead and opened bug 1182625.

Comment 21

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?) from comment #18)
> Personally, I'd WONTFIX this bug. Mozilla is no longer (and maybe never was)
> trying to get people to use XUL for building things.

(In reply to Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired) from comment #20)
> I've gone ahead and opened bug 1182625.

=> wontfix