329886 - Mozilla PostScript module producing raster image PS files (text unselectable)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Description

[kimmie_231]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060124 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060124 Firefox/1.5.0.1

Hello! I am using firefox under windows and linux. Although in windows I can "print" to pdf webpages (with pdfcreator-ghostscript) and read them and copy things under Linux (ubuntu-debian) I can't (using cups-pdf and ghostscript) (printed as an image).

However I can do it with mozilla-suite 1.7, which doesn't have the Mozilla PostScript module. So in the document properties there is no creator, but when I print with Firefox creator is Mozilla PostScript module (rv:1.8.0.1/2006012415).

I understand that with this module I can print texts in any language and this is very important, and the price I have to pay is that when I  try to print it to pdf to print it as an image. That is not useful for a later use.  I can not even follow the url. I also understand that it is a part of all the new mozilla products and of products depend on them.

Could it someway this module be enabled or disabled in the printer dialog? Or in the future could it be used ghostscript with supports both ps and pdf?

Thank you for your time. I hope there would be a solution.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[kimmie_231]

PS. I just noticed that "printing" to pdf with Mozilla Debian Package 1.7.12-1ubuntu1 gives at the properties of the pdf document as creator the  Mozilla PostScript module (rv:1.7.12/2005101313) and the pdf is readable. I just hitted on the link upper right to come back here. Still not other languages supported though. I don't know if that helps but thought good to mention.

Comment 2

[Philip Withnall (unavailable)]

Sorry, I don't quite understand the problem here. What are the symptoms?

Comment 3

[kimmie_231]

Attachment: Different creators

Comment 4

[kimmie_231]

I tried to make attachments the result of making pdfs from firefox and mozillas-suite-1.7.12, but I didn't make it. I uploaded them here
http://www.geocities.com/kimmie_231/job_188-untitled_document.pdf (firefox result)
http://www.geocities.com/kimmie_231/job_189-untitled_document.pdf (mozilla-suite result)

From the screenshoot you see the difference at the creator field (Different Mozilla Postscript module)

I use 
Ubuntu Linux 5.10
cups-pdf 2.05
Ghostscript AFPL 8.53

The problems as you can see from the links is that while from the mozilla-suite result you can copy the text, you can not do that from the firefox result (you take symbols). I believe that is something that has to do with this Mozilla postscript module. I need to use the created pdfs later, and I think that many other users do. I hope I helped you understand.

Comment 5

[Philip Withnall (unavailable)]

What's the problem then? The page printed in Firefox is fine, and the one from the suite is using an older version of the PS module.

Comment 6

[kimmie_231]

You can copy the text from the one( the mozilla's) and you can NOT copy the text from the other (the firefox's). For example if I would like to come again to this url I could not copy it from the upper right corner and paste it to firefox.

Comment 7

[Philip Withnall (unavailable)]

To me it looks like Firefox is outputting a (raster?) image instead of text. Odd.

Comment 8

[kimmie_231]

Yes that is what I am talking about. And seamonkey does the same, all the products using the newest module. 

Comment 9

[Philip Withnall (unavailable)]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060324 Firefox/1.6a1 - Build ID: 0000000000
Confirmed.

Comment 10

[Simos Xenitellis]

I tried with Acrobat Reader in Windows XP.
In Acrobat Reader you can select the text, however, in the second version of the document, the text pasted is garbage.

A. First document (job_187-untitled_document.pdf):
"All the new Mozilla based browsers have a Mozilla Postscript Module that makes the document like"

B. Second document (job_188-untitled_document.pdf): 
"%&'
	&

(')

'	*"

Confirming that something is wrong in the second document.
I did not try yet to recreate these two types of documents and test again.

Comment 11

[Kenneth Herron]

This is because of the fix for bug 234182. The printing subsystem generates a set of fonts on the fly for each print job. In job_188-untitled_document.pdf, the 'B' glyph (letter image) is the first glyph in the document so it's assigned a character code of 1. When copying & pasting text, adobe reader has no way to translate character code 1 to the letter 'B', so it pastes character 01 (control-A) instead of character 66 (ascii code for 'B').

Comment 12

[Ilja Sekler]

While we are moving towards Firefox 3.0, the *only* way to print web pages to PDF files on Linux without losing the entire text data remains using a very old Gecko browser like Mozilla 1.7.13.

A lack of this important functionality on the current trunk will become critical as soon as GTK1 and libstdc++5 disappear from future Linux distributions.

Comment 13

[Pawel Zieminski]

I am stunned by the low visibility of this problem as reflected in the low number of votes. To me PDF documents which cannot be indexed by a full text desktop search tool are virtually useless. There surely must be more than 2 people who regularly print to PDF and expect Beagle to later find it (and who can also search Mozilla bug database).

Comment 14

[u285178]

This is a Ghostscipt problem, not a Mozilla problem. Text selection works if the ps to pdf conversion is performed with a recent version of Ghostscript.

I tested with:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.10) Gecko/20071015 SUSE/2.0.0.10-0.1 Firefox/2.0.0.10

and

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b2pre) Gecko/2007120104 Minefield/3.0b2pre

The PostScript output from both versions of Firefox is text selectable when converted to PDF with Ghostscript 8.61.

I also tested Ghostscript 8.60, 8.56, and 8.54 and could successfully extract the text. However using Ghostscript 8.01, 8.15, or 8.50 I could not select the text.

Comment 15

[Ilja Sekler]

(In reply to comment #14)

> This is a Ghostscipt problem, not a Mozilla problem. Text selection works if
> the ps to pdf conversion is performed with a recent version of Ghostscript.

Confirming for

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.8.1.10) Gecko/20071126 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.10

and

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b2pre) Gecko/2007113016 Firefox/3.0b2pre

Ghostscript version shipped with Ubuntu 7.10: 8.61.dfsg.1~svn8187-0ubuntu3.2