1694484 - Print of double-sided documents - New Print Manager

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1694879

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Description

[Dombi]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:86.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/86.0

Steps to reproduce:

I wanted to print a double-sheet with the new print manager. My printer: WorkForce WF-3640DTWF

Actual results:

Printed double-sided, but the reverse side is always the wrong way around.

Expected results:

The second side should also be printed in the correct direction. I think that the new print manager needs an additional menu "print direction of the reverse side".

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Printing: Output' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Thanks for the bug report! This sounds a lot like bug 1689412, except that bug should be fixed in version 86. Also: good news, the new menu that you suggested is coming in the next release in ~4 weeks, Firefox 87.

A few questions for you, to be sure we're understanding your report correctly:

• Are you printing in portrait mode or landscape mode?
• For now (until the dropdown-menu arrives in v87), the intent is that portrait-mode printouts should flip sideways (like a book) to see the back side, while landscape-mode printouts should flip vertically (like a wall calendar) to see the back side. Does that match what you're seeing, or are you seeing something different?

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

See https://support.ricoh.com/bb_v1oi/pub_e/oi_view/0001037/0001037857/view/printer/unv/0055.htm for some helpful graphics of the various two-sided-printing possibilities.

As of Firefox 86, we're intending to always do "Long Edge" binding, which corresponds to the first and third diagrams there. Does that match what you're seeing?

Comment 4

[Dombi]

Hello,

Thank you very much for the answer. I have tried a lot now. When I reported the bug always came "Duplex Flip on Short Edge (Portrait)" when printing in portrait orientation. But I did not press the button "Portrait", because this was automatically selected.

After your answer I tried the document again and now first pressed the button "Portrait" and selected two-sided. Now the page comes correctly in "Duplex Flip on Long Edge (Portrait)".

PS: Please excuse my bad english.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Thanks! That's somewhat mysterious, but I'm glad it ended up doing the right thing.

If you wouldn't mind testing one more thing: could you see if a fresh browser profile is affected? I'm trying to figure out whether is something that happens regardless of your starting conditions, or if this might've been from some setting that we had saved in your existing profile (which wouldn't be there in a fresh profile).

To test that out, here's what you'd do:
(1) Type about:profiles into your URL bar
(2) Click "Create a new Profile", and click through the dialog (giving it a name to help you distinguish it later, like "testing")
(3) Click "Launch profile in new browser" for your newly-created browser profile.
(4) See if you can reproduce the bug in the new window that appears (do you get any short-edge printing behavior there, if you initiate a print and choose two-sided printing?)

(After you're done, you'll want to click "set as default" on about:profiles for your original profile -- otherwise the new one becomes the default going forward, which isn't something you actually want in this case. :) )

Comment 6

[Dombi]

Hello,

I have tested it with a new profile. Everything works perfectly right away. Even without clicking on the "Portrait" button, the print comes directly as "Duplex Flip on Long Edge (Portrait)".

Comment 7

[Mjules]

Hello,

I've got the same issue with firefox 86 (updated this morning). The step from comment 4 (manually select portrait mode even if already selected, the same for two-sided mode) seems to fix the problem (tested after closing and reopening firefox).

The issue was not present on FF85 with the new print dialog (that I like a lot more than the previous one) enabled through about:config.

No problem with a new profile (except I don't get the new print dialog by default, need to enable it via about:config).

My printer is a Samsung ML3310nd on windows 7

regards
julien

Comment 8

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Thanks for that information, Dombi and Mjules. Really good to know that a new profile isn't affected - that reduces the scope of users who might be affected by this; and good to know that changing print settings (probably other ones besides just 'portrait') ends up fixing it going forward.

If anyone else who is currently affected by this bug happens to stumble across this bug page, please try the following & report back, before attempting any workarounds:
(1) Type about:config into your URL bar and hit Enter.
(2) Type 'duplex" into the textbox at the top.
(3) Please comment here with the range of values that you see -- in particular, are they all 0 and 1, or are any of them 2? (particularly for the line that has your main/default printer in its preference-name)

I have one theory that explains what happened here (at least: I've confirmed this is one way of triggering the behavior described). I suspect that affected users had the value 2 stored in that duplex pref, somehow. The 2 value corresponds to "short edge flip" (which is the bad/unexpected behavior here -- it feels upside-down & wrong for portrait-mode print operations, and it's not what we want as the default). The intent of our print UI in Firefox 86 is: if you manually enable the Two-Sided Printing checkbox, you should get "long-edge flip" which corresponds to a value of 1 in that about:config pref. But if you happen to already have 2 stored in your about:config preferences for the printer, then we show the checkbox as checked, and we print with the short-edge duplex mode (respecting the "2" value that we read in). If you change your print preferences (e.g. unchecking & rechecking the checkbox), then we switch to the good mode (long-edge duplex) and we'll write that out to your prefs. But until we've done that, we'll respect the value 2 that we read in from prefs.

As for how we could've had the 2 value stored in the prefs for these users:

• it could have been via bug 1689412 (where we used & would've stored the wrong default, for Firefox users in version 85 who were using the new print dialog)
• or it could've been through them intentionally choosing to do a short-edge duplex print operation, in the legacy system-print-dialog (where duplex settings are available via the "Preferences" button, if the printer supports duplex modes.

(In reply to Mjules from comment #7)

The issue was not present on FF85 with the new print dialog (that I like a lot more than the previous one) enabled through about:config.

I don't have a great explanation for this ^^ observation, but I do have one theory -- I would've expected that julien would have hit a more-severe version of this issue in Firefox 85, as described in bug 1689412. I do have a theory for how julien might've avoided that fate, though -- via a version of the same theory as described above. If julien previously had 1 (long-edge) saved as their duplex print mode setting in about:config, and if they never changed print settings enough to clear that value, then Firefox would've read in & honored that value (and shown the checkbox as checked).

(The only thing I can't explain is why julien would've observed the behavior changing after upgrading to Firefox 86; but that could've happened if they adjusted print settings for some print operation just before the upgrade, which inadvertently would've caused 2 to get written in to their print duplex settings, since that's what we were using as the default in Firefox 85.)

Comment 9

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #8)

If anyone else who is currently affected by this bug happens to stumble across this bug page, please try the following & report back, before attempting any workarounds:

Update: someone helped us with this in bug 1694769, which was great.

I now think I understand what caused this, and I've filed bug 1694879 to cover the general issue. I'm marking this bug as a duplicate of that one. Thanks very much for the report!

For now, for any affected users, the simplest workaround is to un-check and re-check the "print on both sides" checkbox in our print dialog, and that should re-establish the setting in a non-broken way.