386569 - Some pages are printed blank with "page-break-before: always;" style

Status: NEW

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Description

[Jez]

For some reason, Firefox prints some pages blank, I'm not sure why.  An example is this page: http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephone/uk_telephone.html

On both the print preview and actual printout, the first page (of 4) is completely blank.  I've been told that others have tested on Linux and it's OK there, so it would appear to be a Windows-only problem.

Comment 1

[peter]

Attachment: test case

I have also a test case, exported from OpenOffice.org.

Comment 2

[peter]

Attachment: originating document

This is the originating document, from which the test case has been exported using OpenOffice.org 2.2

Comment 3

[peter]

I can provide further information that could help to solve the problem:

If You change the style of the first line in the document from "heading" to "default", and then export to html, Firefox works alright.

Comment 4

[rsx11m]

> On both the print preview and actual printout, the first page (of 4) is
> completely blank.  I've been told that others have tested on Linux and it's OK
> there, so it would appear to be a Windows-only problem.

Yes, I've tried this with current SeaMonkey 1.1.9 releases, and that page prints fine on the Linux version; the Windows XP version shows two blank pages and the 3rd page starting with "Although pin 4 has no function, ..." next to a floating image. I'm also seeing this with current SM 2.0a1pre trunk build (Windows, 2008050202).

I think that comment #1 is potentially different, it shows a blank first page as well, but the entire text is retained (in contrast to the URL example).

A related report is bug 431893, which refers a more complex testcase that causes missing content on printing, independent of the platform. Thus, that may be just the same problem on a larger scale, or something different coincidentally resulting in a similar appearance.

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

> (comment #4) current SeaMonkey 1.1.9 releases, and that page
> prints fine on the Linux version;

Sorry, I posted this to early as it seems. I've played with the Page Setup, where the problem can be prompted by increasing the scale. Also, I'm getting a different threshold when this kicks in, depending on the printer driver used. For the generic PostScript/default printer, it prints fully with 85% scale, but looses the first-page contents at 88% scale. I'm getting a different (higher) threshold for my regular printer.

Thus, this is not a Windows-specific problem, but it potentially depends on the printer settings/filters used.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

rsx11m, can you still reproduce this? And if so, can you improve the summary?  Thanks

Comment 8

[mirh]

Bug 1374103 should probably be considered too.

Comment 9

[Mantaroh Yoshinaga[:mantaroh]]

As far as I can see, The behavior of attachment 290362 [details] is expected behavior.
The <H1> style of this content contain 'page-break-before: always;'[1], so this document contain blank page when printing.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/page-break-before

I confirmed that other browsers prints first blank page except blink. (i.e. Edge / IE / Webkit prints first blank page.)

Comment 10

[rsx11m]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #7)
> rsx11m, can you still reproduce this? And if so, can you improve the summary?

Reproducible for the given testcase with SeaMonkey 2.29.2 on Windows 7.

While this may be a technically correct behavior per comment #9, it's nevertheless confusing and a waste of paper. I'm wondering if empty pages in general should be suppressed if specific styles happen to create them. However, for duplex printing, blank pages may be intended there for padding, though would be hard to predict for HTML (in contrast to, let's say, PDF documents).