386329 - Table thead and tfoot don't print on pages after the 1st, with 300px-tall thead

Status: NEW

(Core :: Layout: Tables, defect)

Description

[Chris Bouchard]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4

On a table with a thead and tfoot, the thead and tfoot don't always print on every page.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to page
2. Open print preview of page
Actual Results:  
The table sometimes prints with no/partial header or no/partial footer.

Expected Results:  
The table prints with the header and footer on every page.

The header seems to be cut off more in landscape than in portrait, but the footer still gets cut off in portrait.

Comment 1

[Chris Bouchard]

Attachment: Screenshot of print preview on Mac

Here is the print preview of the first two pages.  Notice that the second page is missing the header and the second line of the footer.

Comment 2

[Mike van Oorschot]

I can reproduce this on FireFox release version 2.0.0.6 on WinXP (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6).

The header disappearing (rather than the footer) is more frequent for me and the output changes in Print Preview when changing the Scale. For example, scaled 70% or below the header appears on every page; above that the header on page 2 onwards is missing.

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

This bug was reported on Firefox 2.x or older, which is no longer supported and will not be receiving any more updates. I strongly suggest that you update to Firefox 3.6.3 or later, update your plugins (flash, adobe, etc.), and retest in a new profile. If you still see the issue with the updated Firefox, please post here. Otherwise, please close as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
http://www.mozilla.com
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+mode

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.x or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.

Comment 5

[Mike van Oorschot]

Re-tested on 3.6.3 on WinXP (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729)) and it is still an issue. Its worse, if anything - theads/tfoots do not appear on any pages > 1.

Mike.

Comment 6

[Mike van Oorschot]

Attachment: Screenshots and sample HTML/CSS

The Word doc shows print preview screenshots in IE and FF. IE correctly repeats the table header on page 2. FF does not.

Sample HTML/CSS is also included.

Comment 7

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Comment on attachment 447090 [details]
Screenshots and sample HTML/CSS

I'm sorry, but there are far too many security risks for me to open your word doc. Please attach screenshots as separate jpeg, png, gif, whatever you want images, and html/css as a .html file.

Comment 8

[Mike van Oorschot]

Attachment: Sccreenshots and sample html/css

Fair enough. Sample html/css as before but with separate screenshots as jpgs.

Comment 9

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Confirmed with testcase from attached zip file. I've created a reduced testcase from the attachment, and I'll post that & mark everything else attached so far as private, since they appears to contain details of financial transactions, which could be considered personal.

Comment 10

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: reduced testcase 1

(I left the initial screenshot un-hidden, because it seems to just be a listing of prices for artwork, which is less confidential than the later attachments.)

Here's the reduced testcase.  If I print-preview this, I see "TABLE HEADER" on page 1 only.  There's no header on the subsequent pages.

Comment 11

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: reduced semi-reference 1

In this "semi-reference case", I've just changed the height of the header content from 300px to 30px, and that fixes the problem -- it makes the header show up on each print-previewed page, as expected.

I'm testing with the following mozilla-central nightly build:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100523 Minefield/3.7a5pre

Comment 12

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I get the same behavior with attached testcase & reference case in a recent-ish Firefox 3.6.x nightly:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.5pre) Gecko/20100506 Namoroka/3.6.5pre

as well as a Firefox 3.0.x nightly:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.16pre) Gecko/2009110204 GranParadiso/3.0.16pre

I can't run Firefox 2.0 on my platform anymore, so I can't test that.  But since this dates back at least as 3.0, I'm pretty sure the reduced testcase is hitting the same problem that was originally described here.

Comment 13

[Mike van Oorschot]

FYI, the screenshots and my original sample html/css all contain entirely fictitious data. So no confidentiality problems. Thanks.

Comment 14

[Bernd]

300px is more than 25% of page and it is not repeatable
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/tables/nsTableFrame.cpp#2588

Comment 15

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to comment #13)
> FYI, the screenshots and my original sample html/css all contain entirely
> fictitious data. So no confidentiality problems. Thanks.

Ok, I've un-hidden them -- thanks for clarifying.

(In reply to comment #14)
> 300px is more than 25% of page and it is not repeatable

That's what's causing the problem in Mike's attached testcase, then -- his thead ends up with a height that's greater than 25% of the page, and so that "IsRepeatable" check prevents us from printing it on subsequent pages.

Having said that, is that 25%-restriction standardized anywhere?  And if not, is it a restriction we actually want to keep?

(Also -- it looks like the original screenshot may have been for a different problem, because the tfoot is only partially cut off on the 2nd page -- it's not entirely missing.  Sadly, we don't have a testcase for that, though.)

Comment 16

[Bernd]

I am in support of this cap,  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57378#c22 describes the reasons pretty good.

Comment 17

[Bernd]

Daniel do you have an idea how to deal further with this bug. For me is either WFM or incomplete or invalid. Or do I miss thing. What can be fixed here?

Comment 18

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

It's definitely not WFM - the testcase behaves differently (no repeating thead) than the reference.  And it's not INCOMPLETE - we have/had a site that reproduced it, and a reduced testcase from that site.

So if anything, it's INVALID or WONTFIX.  The explanation linked in Comment 16 seems reasonable enough to me, so I'd be all right with this being resolved as either of those.