369602 - Tables spanning multiple pages get printed incorrectly resp. doesn't print the entire table

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 294991

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Description

[Pascal Fellerich]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1

I have a simple but large table which spans several (paper) pages. In order to repeat the header and footer on every printed page, the HTML code specifies the proper thead and tfoot tags, along with CSS such as "thead { display: table-header-group; }". In FF1.0 and 1.5, as well as in IE6, this worked mostly (slight rendering glitches such as partial cells not considered here); but in FF2.0.0.1, this produces the following effects:

1. Footer does not get printed anymore from page 2 onwards, until the last page, where it reappears

2. Top line of the header disappears (may be CSS related, though) 

3. In some cases - but not in the test case I appended - the table body segment on the last page disappears completely, leaving only the thead and tfoot on that page. Any content below is rendered correctly. This is visible also on the print preview.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a long table as follows:
<table><thead>...header... <tfoot>...footer... <tbody> ...lots of <tr>'s 
2. Include the following CSS:
thead { display: table-header-group; }
tbody { display: table-row-group; }
tfoot { display: table-footer-group; }
table { page-break-after: always; }

3. Render using FF2.0.0.1 -> correct, all OK
3. Print(preview) using FF2 shows the problem.
Actual Results:  
Truncated tables

Expected Results:  
All rows in the table should be printed, preferably with intact cells, and most important, with the table header and footer repeated on every printed page.

See the attached test case.
Note that this is a highly simplified test case, since the original HTML code contained a lot of confidential business information.

I also set the severity to 'major', because the inadvertent user may miss important information due to a truncated table.

On request, I can prepare a more detailed test case reproducing the truncation effect reliably.

Comment 1

[Pascal Fellerich]

Attachment: long HTML table using thead/tfoot to repeat hdr/footer on every printed page

This HTML file can be used to reproduce the missing footer problem.
The truncated last page problem does not show up with this HTML.

Comment 2

[Pascal Fellerich]

Attachment: Truncated table printout test case #2

This is a real-life HTML page that suffers from this truncation bug, with the CSS included into the HTML (should be standalone). The original information was replaced by 'x's, but the document nicely reproduces the bug...

Comment 3

[Pascal Fellerich]

WORKAROUND:

I finally found a workaround. In the above test case #2, 
1. remove the 'page-break-*' instructions from the table CSS
2. then insert the following before every table:
<div style="page-break-before:always; height:1px;">&nbsp;</div>


Offtopic: A similar fix, using page-break-after, is required to fix IE7 who simply ignores the original test case CSS. :-)

Comment 4

[Stephen]

Confirmed on Firefox 2.0.0.6

Comment 5

[Boris 'pi' Piwinger]

There are many similar bug reports and in fact the bug is as old as I can think about it. Essentially, some table data is lost when printing. Duping this to a confirmed bug which is rather general. If you are sure that it is different, please undo.

pi