280697 - Page Setup is stored per-printer, not globally, as implied by the UI

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Description

[fmouse-mozilla]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041230 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041230 Firefox/1.0

Page settings for printing in Firefox are associated with individual
printers in a way that's neither obvious nor easy to use.  The position of
the Page Setup menu item in the File menu hierarchy implies that it peers
with the Print dialog, and that margins, headers and footers are set
globally in the UI and apply independent of which printer is used.  In fact,
page settings are stored per-printer.

In Linux, One can see this by going to file-print, selecting a printer, and
then canceling the print operation, then going to Page Setup and checking
the page settings.  Change the settings, go back to File->Print, select
another printer and cancel.  Then go back to page settings and the previous
settings have been "forgotten".  Actually, they're associated with the first
printer selected, and stored in prefs.js (accessible through
'about:config') with a spec for the printer.

In Windows, the situation is more difficult since the page setup associated
with a particular printer, unless it's the default, can't be accessed unless
and until a page is actually printed to that printer, at which point the
printer selection becomes sticky and one can go back out to the Page Setup
dialog and make necessary changes.

One of two things needs to happen.

1.  the printing options and UI dialogs need to be rearranged or relabeled
    in such a way that it becomes obvious that a particular page setup is
    associated with a particular printer, and each page setup for each
    printer needs to be available without printing, or backing up.

2.  The functionality of Page Setup needs to be made global, as implied by
    the present UI.

Please see bug #130075 which this blocks.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to File->Page Setup
2. Change a setting
3. Go to File->Print
4. Change printers in the drop down printer selection box
5. Cancel (in Linux) or Print (in Windows)
6. Go back to the File->Page Setup dialog

Actual Results:  
The setting made in stpe 2 above has apparently been "forgotten", although it's
actually still stored, and associated with the no-longer selected printer.

Expected Results:  
Either the Page Setup dialogs should be clearly associated with a particular
printer in the UI (and independently accessable) or the Page Setup options need
to be globalized so as to apply to all printers.

Comment 1

[Douglas Moyes]

This is consistent with all operating systems. Mac OS X makes it even more
difficult since it has its own dialog window.  The pritable area configuration
should be in the page setup, no where else.

Comment 2

[fmouse-mozilla]

Then page setup params needs to be global and not stored as a property of each
printer, as is currently the case.  That's the crux of the problem.  Of the two
solutions I suggested, this is the 2nd one, and IMHO is the correct one.

Comment 3

[Dylan McCall]

Just confirming that it's still happening here with Firefox 2 on Windows XP.

Ugly stuff.
This needs a fix, pronto!

For starters, I recommend a quick fix to the default settings which could conceal the problem for now until it is properly fixed:
Place Title and Page # on the right side of the header and footer by default, instead of on the left. Printers seem to be a lot less picky about that side of the page.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

do you see this issue still with version 3.6 or 4.0 beta?

Comment 5

[fmouse-mozilla]

Things look a great deal better in 3.6.3 for Linux.  The printer settings are global, and the default margin settings are reasonable, making the need for a way to set margins in the printing UI less immediate - which is good since there are none!  I note that bringing up about:config and filtering for "margin" provides a nice set of global and per-printer settings which should provide as much flexibility as most people will need.

Comment 6

[Stephanie Daugherty [:sdaugherty]]

WFM per reporter's comments