Closed Bug 332359 Opened 19 years ago Closed 18 years ago

Printing html barcode formed by small gif images comes different from print preview

Categories

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Printing: Output
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
major

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: eduardo.antunez, Unassigned)

References

(
URL
)

Details

(Keywords: qawanted)

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1 We came up with a solution to mount a barcode with small gifs, in which we set the width and height properties of each gif that composes the whole barcode. It appears perfect in the print preview, but when we actually print it, it comes malformed, not being readable by the barcode readers. Please look at the URL that demonstrates the problem and try to print it. In Firefox 1.0 it was ok, but in 1.5 the print result is not good. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Print preview and see how the barcode looks ok. 2.Print it and see how it looks different from the preview. 3. Actual Results: The barcode looks malformed when printed. Expected Results: I expect it to print the barcode correctly as in Firefox 1.0 or Internet Explorer 6.
Is there too much whitespace between the small GIFs or how do the printed out barcodes differ from the print preview? Also what printer (and driver version) do you use?
Yes, it looks like the printed barcode has less black vertical bars (or more white spaces, as you prefer) than the preview one. The printed barcode is less "dense" than it should be. The printer is a HP LaserJet, the driver is HP LaserJet 1015 PCL 5e.
I also would like to add that it's not a problem of DISTANCE between the bars, it's a problem of black bars not being printed out. So the final width of the whole barcode is always the same.
> it's a problem of black bars not being printed out. The scale value of Page Setup must be the same scale value of Print Preview. So please report back what are the scale values in the steps to reproduce. Also, note that - your HTML markup code has validation errors (86 errors in transitional, not even strict) http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sirb.com.br%2Fbarcode_printing_problem.html&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&verbose=1 - your webpage code is using/relying on nested tables (even 3 levels deep) when it is not needed at all. Nested tables is the nr 1 problem with your webpage, I'd say. Making the structure of the markup simplier will help printing, cross-browser rendering, code maintenance by you or others, code upgrade, etc. - some of the attribute specifications do not make sense or are inconsequent. E.g.: at line 53 in the source code <td width="176" colspan="3" valign="top"><table width="110%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> Notice that you want a cell to render a deeply nested table which will use 110% (not 100%) of the available width. That is impossible. - your tables and table cells are over-constrained at several spots: this is the number 2 problem with your webpage. Over-constrained tables and table cells means that the tables and/or table cells will stretch, expand for sure to render content... but your code will ignore this phenomenon. - you have 2 documents in the same url: /body> </html><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> Your bugreport would be a lot more easier to investigate with a better structured webpage (valid markup code, strict DTD, no nested tables, no over-constrained tables or table cells, valid CSS code, etc.). Regarding this, I'm adding qawanted keyword -- Finally, there may be other ways to "print" barcode on a webpage; I used to embed webfonts of barcode (like c39hrp24dhtt) in webpages but Mozilla does not support for now this. When SVG support will be greater, this will be another possibility. There are other possibilities too. But this is off-topic.
Keywords: qawanted
Another point to check: requested font-size value. You have 6 classes with font-size declarations with a requested value of 10px or less and you have body, td and th requesting a font-size of 10px. Let me assure you that 10px, furthermore less than 10px, is quite small for a majority of people over 40 years old or with a weakened vision. That's why a lot of these people will set a minimum font-size of 12px or 11px: Edit/Preferences.../Appareance/Fonts/Minimum font size . How is this going to affect print preview compared to actual printing is another issue to investigate. But one has to assume that it will. I have my minimum font-size set to 12px; so, I'm sure that I'm not viewing the webpage as intended.
I followed your tips to make my Html valid and the elimination of nested tables solved the problem. In fact we elimimated all of them. Thank you for your help!
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
It doesn't appear as if any actual code changes were involved here - just procedural. -> WORKSFORME
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago → 18 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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