242683 - Confusion about the printing system being used

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Frank Winkler]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040116
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 0.6

I got the impression that the versions with an odd number behind the zero just
print by means of the OS whereas the even ones insist on Xprt and $XPSERVERLIST.
This applies to my switches from 0.3 to 0.4 to 0.5 to 0.6.

What's the "wanted" state here?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
Currently, I'm running 0.6 and can't print without Xprt. This is annoying!

Expected Results:  
Click on "print" and get the result.

Comment 1

[Daniel Lilienberg]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.6) 
Gecko/20040116
> Build Identifier: Thunderbird 0.6
> I got the impression that the versions with an odd number behind the zero 
just
> print by means of the OS whereas the even ones insist on Xprt and 
$XPSERVERLIST.
> This applies to my switches from 0.3 to 0.4 to 0.5 to 0.6.
> What's the "wanted" state here?
From what I know binaries from Sun Microsystems support Postscript/default 
only for legacy reasons and future builds will no longer support it. Wanted 
state seems to be Xprt printing in the near future (as of Solaris 10); 
contributed binaries are ahead of that policy and already dropped support for 
Postscript/default.

Comment 2

[Frank Winkler]

Hmm ... and what's the sense of that? What exactly does Xprt do and what's the
alleged advantage over the well-working PS stuff?

Furthermore, now that I failed with 0.6, even 0.5 no longer prints in the usual
way. And when I start Xprt and set XPSERVERLIST accordingly, I get a printed
page but instead of A4, the result is something like A6 in landscape format on
an A4 sheet :( ...

Comment 3

[Roland Mainz]

Frank Winkler wrote:
> Hmm ... and what's the sense of that? What exactly does Xprt do and what's the
> alleged advantage over the well-working PS stuff?

I wouldn't call the PS module "well-working" (this only applies if you print
ASCII text with the standard fonts, anything beyond that is a nightmare). At
least the Xprint stuff is officially supported by Sun and they permanently
maintain and enhanche the Xprint server side.

> Furthermore, now that I failed with 0.6, even 0.5 no longer prints in the 
> usual way. And when I start Xprt and set XPSERVERLIST accordingly, I get a >
> printed page but instead of A4, the result is something like A6 in landscape 
> format on an A4 sheet :( ...


Please take a look at
http://xprint.mozdev.org/docs/Xprint_FAQ.html#printout_only_covers_1_4_of_the_paper
-- snip --
Q: "Printing itself works but the printout covers only 1/4 of the paper
- what am I doing wrong ?"

A: This is usually an indicator for a wrong DPI setting. The default
"PSdefault" model config uses 300 DPI but some printers only support
600 DPI.
   
Workaround:  Edit ${XPCONFIGDIR}/C/print/attributes/document and
replace the line "*default-printer-resolution: 300" with
"*default-printer-resolution: 600" (Note that locale-specific settings
in ${XPCONFIGDIR}/${LANG}/print/attributes/document always override
values set in ${XPCONFIGDIR}/C/print/attributes/document.)
   
Solution:  Create a model-config for your printer which only contains
attributes supported by your printer ("printer-resolutions-supported"
is the attribute in the "model-config" which holds the space-seperated
list of DPI values which are supported by the printer).
-- snip --

... does that help ?

Anyway ---> INVALID since the dependicy is stated in the READMEs and in the
release notes (see
http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.7rc1/installation-ports.html#ports_solaris).