63737 - [ps]trouble printing latin2 (iso8859-2) characters

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Description

[Tomasz Jarzynka]

I didn't see this bug elsewhere, but I can't believe I'm not posting a duplicate...

Anyway, Mozilla won't let me print pages with Latin2 characters correctly.
When I print the page to file, and then I print it with ghostscript, there
are squares instead of national accented characters. When I pipe the file
through ogonkify or a2ps and then print it, the chars are either squares
or other nasty glyphs, but they never appear correctly.

Is there no way the mozilla team's gonna fix it? Is there no way I can print
pages with Mozilla (pages that contain non-ASCII chars)? Is there an utility to
solve the prob?

Comment 1

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Reporter:  It would help if you give an example page with latin2 characters that
shows up badly when printed.

Comment 2

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

From: Tomasz Jarzynka <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 20:26:46 +0100
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [Bug 63737] Changed - trouble printing latin2 (iso8859-2) characters

On Tuesday 26 December 2000 16:57, you wrote ([Bug 63737] Changed - trouble
printing latin2 (iso8859-2) characters):
> ------- Additional Comments From [e-mail]  2000-12-26 07:57
> ------- Reporter:  It would help if you give an example page with latin2
> characters that shows up badly when printed.

Yes, sure. http://moo.pl/ogonki/main.html for instance.
You can do a gs -sDEVICE=jpeg and open the file. The squares should
be visible enough.

PS. I do have Latin2 fonts installed on Ghostscript, but it won't
set up the vectors etc (I don't know, I never studied postscript).
Converting the document with ogonkify won't work (it does for
Netscape 4.x and some other apps)

Comment 3

[Tomasz Jarzynka]

So what's up with the bug?
Is it a WONTFIX, or WORKSFORME, or a dupe?

Thanks,
Tom.

Comment 4

[Keyser Sose]

Marking WORKSFORME.

Comment 5

[Keyser Sose]

Reopening as per reporters comments:

I have just used the 10 Jan build, and it of course has the bug.
Printing it with lpr won't work. Trying converting with the only
app available (ogonkify) neither.

So please reopen the bug and remind the print people that this is a
huge no-no in many countries (certainly all using Latin2 characters).

Comment 6

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW.

Comment 7

[shrirang khanzode]

spam : changing qa to sujay (new qa contact for Printing)

Comment 8

[Marek Kro¶nicki]

This bug is still active. I have Mozilla Build ID: 2001020908, and I
can't print iso8859-2 characters corectly

Comment 9

[Mirek]

I confirm this bug - it was in previous milestones as well
(and as the rapporteur I did not bother to check whether it 
was ever filed).
Using W98(US)/M0.8Build20011021508
I would extend the problem to Win1250 codepage - M0.8 does not print 
correctly these pages as well.
Examples: 
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz
http://pes.internet.cz

Comment 10

[IcedSoal]

I have also noticed this problem of printing squares instead of the intended
character but i've had this problem with it printing simple quote characters
such as ' and " as squares, here's the page i had problems with (i was trying to
print out an assignment for english class): http://courses.ncsu.edu/eng112/lec/037/

Comment 11

[IcedSoal]

i forgot, i'm using build 2001021908

Comment 12

[Mirek]

Update onmy previous comment-the problem is printer-driver dependent.
I.e., wiht AdobePS HP Laserjet drive Moz. printed the sqaures, crosses and other
weird stuff. With the native HP driver - it prints well. However, other programs
did not have this diffuculty, both drivers worked fine. Could be that the
drivers are only 99% compatible and Moz uses the remaining 1%?...

Comment 13

[Tomasz Jarzynka]

I don't know. I am using PPA output driver, which outputs a raw bitmap.
No conversion to any internal printer format is done (it is done, of course,
but later, with another driver, which operates on bitmaps, not glyphs - not
possible to mess it then) at that time. If the problem exists, it has to
be Ghostscript or Mozilla-related.

Comment 14

[Tomasz Jarzynka]

****. I am using, of course, PNM (or PNMRAW, or PBM, or PBMRAW, depending on
printout type), not PPA, which is the last stage of the printout on my HP 720.

Comment 15

[Kevin McCluskey (gone)]

Setting milestone to future

Comment 16

[dcone (gone)]

updated milestone, keywords

Comment 17

[wre]

I looked at postscript code generated by Mozilla. I am glad to see that it
generates unicode. But code for printing unicode can be updated.

'/unicodeshow' is working char-by-char. Order of call of functions (if character
is not from ASCII): '/real_unicodeshow', '/real_unicodeshow_native',
'/real_unicodeshow_cid' and '/draw_underfined_char' (prints empty square).

As I understand, first function relies on '/Unicodedict' -- map from unicode
code to postscript program for priting character. But '/Unicodedict' defined
nowhere, so function fails.

Second function relies on '/Unicode2NativeDict' -- map from unicode code to
native font code. But '/Unicode2NativeDict' defined nowhere, so function fails.

Third function tries to use unicode font '/UCS2Font'. It fails on my system.

In result, empty square is printed.

Comment 18

[Roland Mainz]

Filed bug 85399 for Xprint to track this issue in Xprint land. It looks that
Xprint module can print this page correctly except the detail that it doesn't
find the matching encoding for the font...

Comment 19

[Vaclav Dvorak]

I think this is a duplicate of bug 82982. Or vice-versa, but the other one seems
to have traffic. BTW, as a temporary (not perfect) solution, you can use the
"pocesti" utility (find it on freshmeat.net). Can someone please tell me what is
Xprint and how to use it? Because bug 85399 is fixed.

Comment 20

[Roland Mainz]

Oups, seems to forgot to CC: myself to this bug... ;-(

Vaclav Dvorak wrote:
> Xprint and how to use it? Because bug 85399 is fixed.

Well, I assume this is not your only question, therefore I am currently writing
a FAQ about it - see
http://puck.informatik.med.uni-giessen.de/people/gisburn/work/xprint/Xprint_FAQ.txt
Additionally I wrote a "quick guide how to print in koi8-r locales" , see
http://puck.informatik.med.uni-giessen.de/people/gisburn/work/xprint/quickguide_koi8_r.txt
(well, I assume the docs can be much better - I am working on it... but
suggestions/contributions/etc. are every welcome, too :) which may be usefull to
setup Xprint for ISO-8859-2, too... :))

Comment 21

[Pete Zha]

see also bug 65784

Comment 22

[Kenneth Herron]

I visited the urls given in comment 2 and comment 9, printed each to a file, and
viewed them using ghostscript. I didn't see any characters being replaced by
little squares.

a mozilla print job prints squares instead of characters when it can't find a
glyph for the character in the fonts it has available. This happens while the
document is being printed so it's somewhat affected by the actual fonts
installed with the postscript interpreter. It could be that my copy of
ghostscript has glyphs available that aren't in standard fonts such as
Times-Roman. Or it could be that the glyph-searching algorithm has been improved
since this bug was reported.

Comment 23

[Kenneth Herron]

I tested the sample URL by printing it on a couple of PS printers at the office
(an HP 5si and a Xerox 3285, or something like that). Again, none of the
characters were replaced with little rectangles.

I know mozilla's printing is pretty bad for character sets outside of
iso-8859-1, but this particular bug doesn't seem to be reproduceable any more.
I'm going to resolve this. 

Comment 24

[Vaclav Dvorak]

*** Bug 82982 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***