620916 - PDF printing with a PDF-printer not working optimally

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Toolkit :: Printing, defect)

Description

[Timo]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b8) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b8) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b8

In Firefox 4 printing seems to have changed in a way that negatively impacts PDF printing. I tried using Acrobat Distiller, FreePDF, PDFCreator, NitroPDF Pro. Changes to Firefox 4 seem to make it impossible to pass of text to a ghostscript style PDF printer rather it hands off all the text as images which makes the PDF files much larger and none searchable. Is there a way to disable this behavior in Firefox 4 so that works like it did in 3?

I tested with a completely new profile and a new installation. No extra extensions, themes or plugins are installed.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a webpage with text (any)
2. Print with any PDF-printer (for example: Acrobat Distiller, FreePDF, PDFCreator)
3. open PDF-file in PDF-viewer (any, for example: Adobe Reader, Fxit, Sumatra)
Actual Results:  
All the text is as image which makes the PDF files much larger and none searchable

Expected Results:  
Text should be searchable.

As a workaround I have foubnd this: Run Firefox 4 in Safe Mode, which disables all addons. The PDF when printed will be searchable and very low in size.

The key now is to find out which addon is breaking this function. Hope others can do some testing and shed some light on this.

Comment 1

[Kevin Brosnan]

Works for me - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b9pre) Gecko/20101219 Firefox/4.0b9pre and Distiller 9.4.0195. Created a searchable pdf of this bug report.

Comment 2

[Kevin Brosnan]

Attachment: Adobe Distiller printer output

Comment 3

[Anthony Engel]

I have had this issue with Firefox 4.0b8 as well.  (Maybe this has already been fixed in FF 4.0b9pre.)  

As an example, the Firefox legal page printed in FF 3.6.13 produces a 99 kb PDF printed in Acrobat, while FF 4.0b8 produces a 3.7 MB PDF printed in Acrobat.  I experiences this when printing from FF 4.0b8 on two different computers.

Comment 4

[Stefan Phosub]

I have the same Problem with Beta12 still.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b12) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b12

When I print from Firefox 4 (any Beta since 7 when I entered Beta) I get an PDF Output with an Image in it. Unter Firefox 3.6 I get searchable Text in the PDF. IE also produces searchable Text in the PDF. I tested in different Computers Windows XP 32.bit, Windows7 32-bit, Windows 7 64-bit and different PDF Creators PDFFacotry, PDF Creator, Adobe Distiller) all produce the same PDF Output with Image instead of Text.

Comment 5

[Stefan Phosub]

Attachment: PDFFactory Output from FF4B12 - Image not Txt

Comment 6

[Frederic]

Same problem here on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b12) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b12.

The problem seems to be related to Directwrite, if I set gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled to "false", I get real text PDFs again. Unfortunately they have some additional blanks between the letters...

Comment 7

[Frederic]

Attachment: Printing from FF 4b12 with Directwrite disabled

Comment 8

[Frederic]

Attachment: Printing from FF 4b12 with Directwrite enabled

Comment 9

[u375495]

Is it a special problem with Windows 7 - 64 bit? (WOW64) 

like ➜ (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:....)

Comment 10

[Frederic]

Comment #1 and #4 would suggest otherwise.

Comment 11

[Alex]

Attachment: PostScript output from HP Printer Driver

This doesn't just affect PDF printers, attached is the output of my normal printer driver using Print to file.

When run through GhostScript or opened in Apple's Preview.app, the generated PDF file contains no text, only the (low quality) vector outlines.

Is something with DirectWrite causing the normal text placement path to fail, and causing it to fall back to a basic vector path?

Comment 12

[RNicoletto]

It seems related to Hardware Acceleration ==> http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/760923

Comment 13

[jpj-at-bugzilla]

When the graphics acceleration is enabled (tested with Windows 7-x64), the text is converted into Bezier curve.
The file is much larger and the "text" can not be selected or copied (since it is not text).
See (in French): http://www.geckozone.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=631566 # p631566

The problem seems fixed with Firefox 5 and 6.

Comment 14

[RH]

I do not see it fixed. FF 5 on Windows7 64, PDFs are still huge and have no text. Unlike with FF 4, disabling HW acceleration does not make a difference.

Comment 15

[RH]

OK, just as I tried to send an attachment, it seems OK, so please forget my last comment :)

Comment 16

[RH]

Attachment: OK, on the second attempt (after printing still did not work on other pages) I can send an example.

It really only worked one time for me. Normally, I get files like this. No text, big.

Comment 17

[RH]

Attachment: Another example from the print version of this page.

Works sometimes for some parts of the text. The comments are OK, but the box above is not.

Comment 18

[Francewhoa (Francois Carpentier)]

Similar challenge using Firefox version 127 on Debian 12 Bookworm at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1906126

Comment 19

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Firefox's graphics and print backends have been overhauled several times since this bug was filed (in the Firefox 4.0 era).

Any new bugs that seem superficially similar to what-was-described-here are almost certainly new-and-different and deserve their own investigation (so: thanks for filing bug 1906126!)

I'm closing this bug as INACTIVE, to avoid attracting additional comments here about similar issues occurring in more recent Firefox versions.