669828 - Firefox 5 cannot print to paper other than letter size

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Nik Trevallyn-Jones]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110428 Fedora/3.6.17-1.fc13 Firefox/3.6.17
Build ID: 20110428100249

Steps to reproduce:

Tried to print a document that fits almost exactly onto 2 A4 pages


Actual results:

Firefox printed the the bottom of the first logical page (footer etc) on the second physical page; printed the start of the second logical page in the middle of the second physical page; and truncated and did not print the end of the second physical page at all.

This is the perennial "Firefox incorrectly prints to Letter format instead of the correct A4 format" problem.


Expected results:

Firefox should have formatted the output so that the logical pages matched and fitted onto the physical pages.

Comment 1

[Nik Trevallyn-Jones]

1. I support a small architecture practice with 40 workstations on Windows (XP SP3).
- Due to their CAD package requirements, the OS cannot be changed (at least not in the near term).

2. The Firefox printer preferences dialog under Windows does *not* allow the paper size to be set at all (this is true for Firefox 2, 3, and 5).

3. The "native" printer preferences dialog under Windows *does* allow the paper size to be set, but the values are ignored by Firefox (this is also true for Firefox 2, 3, and 5).

**Note: When the native printer setup dialog is called up from Firefox, it (wrongly) shows the printer page size to be Letter (it is actually set to A4). If I change it to A4, then the setting is actually shown as "A4 (97%)" indicating that the page will be reduced to fit. If I print with this setting, the output does not change (it is wrong).
--If, in the native print setup dialog, I go to the "printer settings", the page size there is also set to Letter; if I change that to A4, and then return to the print settings, then A4 becomes "A4 (100%)". If I print with these settings, the outputut is the same (and still wrong).

4. Under Firefox 2.0 (2.0.0.1) (on Windows), I successfully worked around the problem using "about:config" and manually editing all the printer page_size settings by hand.
- This worked.

5. Under Firefox 3.6 (3.6.12) (on Windows), the about:config workaround does *not* work - Firefox ignores any changes I make to the page_size_* settings, and in fact changes them back whenever I print to that printer.

6. Under Firefox 5 (5.0) (on Windows), the print_paper_* settings no longer exist in about:config.
- I have tried using the "native" print setup window, and the values are always ignored.

I have a generated HTML page (timesheet report) that fits almost exactly on 2 A4 pages, but Firefox *always* renders it using Letter size, causing the bottom of the first page to be printed at the top of the second page; the content of the second page to start half-way down the second page; and the bottom of the second page to be truncated and not printed at all.

7. Google Chrome can print the same report perfectly.
- Sadly, this is my current workaround.

8. Interestingly - if I render the report in Firefox using IETab, then the pages print correctly as well.
--When I do this, the "Print Preview" window is different (it comes from IE); the printer preferences dialog is the same native dialog as Firefox shows, but it shows the (correct) paper size of A4 by default, rather than Letter as it does when that same dialog is called up by Firefox.

This problem has been around, in some form, since Firefox 0.9.something, and it still exists. The indications are that there is no simple fix or patch that will correct it.
Perhaps the solution would be to take an existing open-source printing sub-system that works, and integrate it into both Firefox and Thunderbird?
The printing system from OpenOffice seems to work correctly on all platforms...

Cheers!
Nik

Comment 2

[Nik Trevallyn-Jones]

Attachment: test case of a report that is badly malformed when printed using FF 5.0

This test case was generated by producing a report that cannot be printed correctly and saving to disk using "Save As".

On a system presuming Letter printing format, the printout is badly malformatted. If FF can be convinced to print presuming A4 format, then the result is a well-formatted 2 page printout.

If you load this in Google Chrome or IE, and set the output correctly to A4, then again the printout is correct.