87474 - Only first print job is prompted for print or cancel

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Printing, defect)

Description

[cls]

When attempting to delete multiple messages from my imap folder, I occassionally
hit "Print" instead of "Delete".  About a month or so ago, this would mean that
I would have to hit Cancel for each message.  Recently, however, mozilla
automatically prints the rest of the messages without prompting even though I
hit "Cancel" when prompted for the first message.

Comment 1

[dcone (gone)]

Now only one print job can be sent at a time, so if another print job is sent, 
that means that the job before has been sent to the printer which now controls 
the job and is not cancelable.

Comment 2

[cls]

So, if I parsed your explanation correctly, you're saying that because the
second job prints, the first one must've been sent to the printer.  This seems
wrong as I cancelled the first job.  

Comment 3

[dcone (gone)]

well.. let me say this first.. this is the way its suppose to work... so I guess 
there could be a bug if it does not work this way.  I tested this on Windows 
mostly but it is XP.  There could be some timing issues.

The first job will start.. set a flag that other jobs are not allowed to start, 
so anything submited will be stopped and never submited.  If a job is started.. 
then the preceeding job has finished or has been cancelled.

when that first job is cancelled or finishes.. the user can now send another 
job.  If the job starts and can not be cancelled.. is has been sent to the 
printer already and the next job can be started.

Also the print jobs are on a timer.. and can only be cancelled between pages, so 
if its a single page job.. chances are it can not be cancelled.

Its really all a timing issue, print jobs can only be sent one at a time now, 
and are cancellable only on page boundaries and never if it has been sent to the 
printer.  It may seem as if the job is still being worked on by Mozilla, but the 
Postscript can take a long time on the printer.. which can not be cancelled 
except by the printer driver.

Comment 4

[sujay]

verified.

Comment 5

[cls]

Even if this is caused by a timing issue, this is still a problem.  

To make matters worse, recent builds are crashing after hitting "cancel" on the
first print job.   I just noticed this in a cvs tree updated last night and
verified it with this morning's verification build.

Here's the incomplete optimized stack; my debug build is still going.

#0  0x423c6b29 in ?? ()
#1  0x40d84466 in DocumentViewerImpl::DonePrintingPages ()
   from /usr/cls/moz/0.9.2/obj-opt-O3/dist/bin/components/libgkcontent.so
#2  0x40d83906 in nsPagePrintTimer::Notify ()
   from /usr/cls/moz/0.9.2/obj-opt-O3/dist/bin/components/libgkcontent.so
#3  0x40ef7ea9 in process_timers ()
   from /usr/cls/moz/0.9.2/obj-opt-O3/dist/bin/components/libtimer_gtk.so
#4  0x40ef8adb in TimerCallbackFunc ()
   from /usr/cls/moz/0.9.2/obj-opt-O3/dist/bin/components/libtimer_gtk.so
#5  0x4037b04d in ?? () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0
#6  0x4037a186 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0

Comment 6

[sujay]

Can you please file a separate bug on the cancel/crash behavior?
Lets not mix it up with this bug report which is a different issue.

Comment 7

[dcone (gone)]

Crashing from timers.. is a timers bug.. not a printing bug actually.  The use 
of the timers is XP.. so shuting down timers.. and crashing has nothing to do 
printing.. the implementation of timers on Linux is having a problem.

I am asking this.. are you sure that the job you are trying to cancel.. is 
cancelable.. or has the postscript been sent to the printer.  If you are sure 
that the postscript has not been sent to the printer.. then this is a bug.. but 
if the printer is processing the Postscript.. then this is not a bug.  

And if you can submit a second job when the first one is still being processed 
(the postscript has not been sent to the printer) is a bug.  I can not get the 
symptoms you are talking about so I am trying to narrow down what the problem 
is.

1.) sending more than one job to the printer.. should not happen.  But be 
careful.. that does not mean it has printed.. just means that Mozilla has 
finished its work, the printer still has to rip the document.

2.) the current job if it is still outputing the Postscript.. should be 
cancellable on page boundaries.  If it is a one page job or on the last page of 
a job.. chances are you can not cancel it.

Comment 8

[cls]

I filed a separate bug on the the crash issue (bug 87711).

I don't know if the job I'm trying to cancel is cancelable.  In this scenario,
I'm an end-user.  I select multiple messages to print and then decide to cancel
the first one.  I am not prompted about the subsequent messages.  From an
end-user perspective, this is wrong.  Even if I accept printing of the first
message, I am still not prompted about subsequent messages.

Wrt the job being sent to the printer, I would not expect the job to be sent to
the print (ie, lpr to be invoked) until *after* the user clicks "Print".  I
suspect that the job is not sent to the print as there is no visible printer
activity if I let the print dialog sit. 

To recreate the bug:
go into mailnews
select multiple messages from your imap folder
right click on the selected messages to bring up the popup dialog
click print
when the print dialog pops up, click cancel
watch as the rest of the jobs are spooled without prompting
    (or worse, you hit the crash in bug 87711)

Comment 9

[cls]

Changing OS/Platform as I'm sseing this on win32 as well (sans crash).  The only
difference is that after cancelling the first print job, it brings up the
"Install  Printer" dialog as I don't have any printers configured on this
laptop.  If I did, I suspect it would spool the message without prompting.

Comment 10

[dcone (gone)]

What happens here.. is that the mail news is printing the first job with the 
dialog, then it prints the rest of the jobs silently, one at a time.  Mail 
should look at the return value from printing and cancel all the jobs if there 
is an error.  I am assigning to sspitzer to give to the appropriate engineer in 
mail news..

Comment 11

[jlarsen]

UI issue. Lets say I select several messages, then tell it to print only the
first page. It prints the first page of the first message than the entire
message of the rest without prompting. Or should this be a totally seperate bug,
it should prompt either individually, or follow the same rules for all I would
assume.

Comment 12

[Andrew Schultz]

*** Bug 215271 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[cls]

Attachment: Remove SilentPrint setting

I don't understand the purpose of this SilentPrint call at all but removing it
fixes the problem.

Comment 14

[cls]

Ok, in all fairness, I can see the point of that call if the point was to only
display the dialog box once and make multi-message printing an all or nothing
operation.  Unfortunately, either the 'nothing' part wasn't tested or something
changed out from underneath it.  Being adverse to yet another pref & not
frequently printing multiple messages, I'm all for getting a dialog for each
message.

Comment 15

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

*** Bug 249569 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[chris hofmann]

guessing the patch is still good.  seems like the right thing to do.  mscott is
going to try and test a bit in the next few days.

Comment 17

[Scott MacGregor]

Comment on attachment 140286 [details] [diff] [review]
Remove SilentPrint setting

we'll see what happens...

Comment 18

[Scott MacGregor]

fixed branch and trunk

Comment 19

[Matt Westfall]

Okay I read the previous bug you referenced in your last note....

the problem as described in the other bug states... that if you hit print when
you have more than 1 message selected, and you hit cancel... it does not cancell
the other messages you have highlighted....

this was fixed by asking you to print EVERY message....

the plague of open source development....

The cancell should cancell all the print jobs.... removing the subsequent silent
print calls is not the appropriate way to fix the problem.

Yes it solves the one problem, but it generates another one..... where, if you
ACTUALLLY want to print more than 1 message at a time....  

This other person, should Edit their toolbar... and make the Print and Delete
buttons not so close together.... better yet... hit Delete on your keyboard....
problem solved.....

removing the silent print call, which is there for a reason, is not the
soloution to this problem....

Thanks for backing it out scott....

Other guy.... edit your toolbar and use the delete key on your keyboard.....

Crossposting this with other bug.....

Comment 20

[Matt Westfall]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268415

There is a link to the bug I reported about how it started asking for an okay on
each print...

Comment 21

[cls]

Reopening as the fix was reverted by bug 268415 and I'm still hitting this problem in the 1.5.0.5 build.

Comment 22

[Scott MacGregor]

Moving off bugs that didn't make the deadline for Thunderbird 2. 

Comment 23

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 24

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

WFM version 3.0a1pre (2007112004)

1 cancel, no printout

Comment 25

[cls]

It's still broken.  

To reproduce:
1) Highlight 3 messages
2) Click the 'Print icon'
3) Hit 'Cancel' when the printer selection dialog pops up
4) Watch multiple dialog boxes pop up and disappear and watch the 2 & 3 messages get printed on the default printer

Tested on FC6 with:
1.5.0.12
2.0.0.9
tinderbox nightly: thunderbird/tinderbox-builds/tb-linux-tbox-trunk/thunderbird-3.0a1pre.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2
(dated Nov 29 2007)

Comment 26

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(if nightly fails, prob not necessary to test other releases)

2.0.0.9 on vista also WFM with this printer.  comment 24 test was XP.
cc: Ludovic to try MAC, I don't see that anyone tested it.

perhaps only linux fails now? 

Comment 27

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

thorsten do you see this problem on linux trunk?

Comment 28

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 30

[Alexander Sack]

still see this in in ubuntu preview package (thunderbird-3.0):

 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081101 Shredder/3.0b1pre

Comment 32

[TT]

I'm seeing this problem on Seamonkey 2.0.11 on Mac OS X 10.6.6.  I can't believe that this is a 10-year-old bug!

Comment 36

[Tristan Miller]

Confirming problem still exists on Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:19.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/19.0 SeaMonkey/2.16

Comment 37

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

If I understand this correctly, it's about printing selection of multiple messages, and when you click ok on first msg print, it will silently print the others without confirmation (which also looks like a strange implementation instead of compiling a single document for printing from all the messages). However, if you click "Cancel" on the printing of the first msg, it will *also* wrongly continue to print the remaining messages as if you had never clicked "Cancel".

So the idea here would be to catch that first "Cancel" and make it stop the subsequent silent calls.
Somewhere around that mPrintSettings->SetPrintSilent setting found here:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/base/src/nsMsgPrintEngine.cpp#618

FTR: current draft patch attachment 140286 [details] [diff] [review] removes silent calls, will thus prompt on every selected msg, which is bad behaviour and was therefore backed out again, so that approach doesn't work.

Comment 38

[gero]

The right fix IMHO would be to open only one "Printing..." window with a "Cancel" button, that always shows which message is currently being printed, one after the other. The user can hit "Cancel" at any time which would stop printing for all remaining messages.

Comment 39

[mbanack]

I'm hitting this bug on 31.8.0 from the Debian repos (31.8.0-1~deb8u1).

When multiple messages are selected and I bring up the print dialog with Control-p, pressing "Cancel" rather than "Print" still prints all messages except the first.  Additionally, the repeated window popups for "Printing..." each message steal focus such that I cannot go into CUPS and cancel the jobs.