233222 - Firebird ignores selected percentage size reduction when printing. However Mozilla works perfectly.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Aaron Sloman]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20040130 Firebird/0.8.0+

Select File --> Page setup -> Scale 92% size reduction before printing to A4
paper or .ps file. Firebird does not shrink printed version as expected. So the
whole of the chambers crossword does not fit on one page.
However Mozilla works perfectly.

The fault is there whether I print direct to the printer, or first create a
postscript file. This may be related to bug 21689 which complains about
excessive font size in printing, but I don't know.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/crossword/ChambersJul_print.html
2.Select 92% size reduction with A4 size.
3.Print to A4 paper or .ps file. 


Actual Results:  
Firebird does not shrink printed version as expected to fit on one page.

However Mozilla works perfectly.

I have found this difference with several different web pages.
Essentially, Firebird seems to ignore the Scale setting.

Expected Results:  
After I select 92% reduction the whole crossword (i.e. all the questions)
should fit on one A4 page.

I have tried this in more than one nightly build of Firebird. I get this version
of Firebird  MozillaFirebird-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz, just untar it in a
subdirectory of /usr/local/src, set /usr/local/bin/firebird to point to it, and
mostly it just works apart from this printing problem.

It makes no difference whether I have installed extra plugins or not.
I have the TTLO tool extension.

It's very annoying as I have to run Mozilla to do printing, even though I
generally much prefer Firebird's interface.

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

What version of Mozilla prints perfectly?  A nightly build of the same age?  
There shouldn't be any difference in the printing aspect since its shared code, 
but if we're breaking something that works in the same vintage of Mozilla 
builds, we need to figure out what it is.

Comment 2

[Aaron Sloman]

(In reply to comment #1)
> What version of Mozilla prints perfectly?  A nightly build of the same age?  
> There shouldn't be any difference in the printing aspect since its shared code, 
> but if we're breaking something that works in the same vintage of Mozilla 
> builds, we need to figure out what it is.

(I replied by email: apologies if the reply comes twice.)

Yes I tried a recentversion of Mozilla (nightly build):
Mozilla 1.7a
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20040130

Comment 3

[Aaron Sloman]

I forgot to say that using File --> Print preview to view the web page before
printing works fine. The requested scaling is shown.

It is only when you actually print it (to file or printer) that the scaling
is ignored.

So Firebird cleary has the code required for scaling somewhere.

Comment 4

[Aaron Sloman]

APOLOGIES: problem solved

After more experimentation, I found I could get firebird to print the file
at a reduced size on one page but I had to select a much smaller scale size than
I needed for Mozilla: 92% worked for mozilla but I needed 85% for Firebird.

So I did some more investigation, and discovered that if I select 
   File -> Page setup -> Margins & Header/Footer

the defaults were slightly different on Mozilla and Firebird. That's possibly
because I had been using Mozilla for several years before I switched to Firebird
and had changed the defaults and forgotten.

Anyhow by making the margins etc exactly the same, I could get the same behaviour.

I don't know why I did not check this earlier: I guess I just assumed that
I had not altered either.

The point in comment #3 (scaling shown OK in  preview mode) probably helped to
confuse me. I have now find I can get the same behaviour in mozilla: i.e.
choose a scale that shows everything fitting on one page in 'preview mode' yet
when printed it does not fit on one page. I.e. it looks as if the preview mode
does not take full account of header/footer/margin settings and paper size
selected. I wonder if I should report that as a bug?

I am very sorry for any time I have wasted.

I haved now changed this to an INVALID bug. I hope that's OK.

Aaron
www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs