367898 - Print preview shows events in color even when printing in black and white

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: Printing, defect)

Description

[cmtalbert]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a2pre) Gecko/20070122 Calendar/0.6a1

The print preview is showing events in color even when printing is taking place in black and white according to the settings in the Page Setup.  Here is a table illustrating the problem with the preview:
                 Print Background checked           Print Background unchecked
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Month View    |    Preview: Color, Print: Color    | Preview: Color, Print: BW
              |                                    |
Week View     |    Preview: Color, Print: Color    | Preview: Color, Print: BW
              |                                    |
List View     |    Preview: BW,    Print: Color*   | Preview: BW,    Print: BW

*When printing list view in color, the event titles are backgrounded on a uniform color that has nothing to do with the associated calendar color in sunbird.  

Also note that List view *always* shows events in black and white, even when printing in color.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to File->Page Setup, uncheck "Print Background (colors & images)"
2. Go to File->Print and check the print preview

Actual Results:  
Print Preview (unless in list view) always shows color when settings are to print in black and white

Expected Results:  
Print Preview should always refer to the B&W and color settings to display an appropriate rendition of what the actual output will look like.

Marking as minor since it is not a debilitating issue, just a disorienting one.

Comment 1

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

IMHO this can be fixed either in our custom print preview or with Bug 350099.

Comment 4

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

(In reply to Stefan Sitter [:ssitter] from comment #1)

IMHO this can be fixed either in our custom print preview or with Bug 350099.

Is thisgoing to be fixed?

I have several calendars with assigned colors that show in print preview Monthly Grid or Weekly Planner that print out in B&W using my B&W laser printer.

After 9 years I would think anyone seeing the preview in B&W would be filing a bug reporting that the the preview doesn't show the colors.

Comment 5

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

In my opinion, no. Not with the current printing flow – there's no way to select a printer or the options for a printer until after the preview dialog, so any decision about whether to display in B&W would be based on whatever the last print job did. We could improve the preview dialog to include printer selection and options (and remove the OS dialog that appears when you click on Print), then change the preview to reflect them, but I really don't think that's a priority at the moment.

Comment 6

[Paul Morris [:pmorris]]

Thinking out loud... ideally the OS would handle print preview in its printer dialog, and then we could use our resources for other things, and not try and show a realistic print preview in the calendar dialog, but rather just a generic icon-like image of the different layouts (for list, grid, weekly planner, etc.). Then the OS could show a better print preview with the color/B&W/paper size/etc. taken into account. Looks like Ubuntu doesn't provide a print preview like that, although I think macOS does, and likely Windows also. In any case, I agree with Geoff that there doesn't seem to be a really good and simple fix.