Closed Bug 880181 Opened 11 years ago Closed 5 years ago

pdf works on screen, but corrupt when printed: pdf.js

Categories

(Firefox :: PDF Viewer, defect, P3)

22 Branch
x86
All
defect

Tracking

()

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1530881

People

(Reporter: augustmiles, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [pdfjs-c-rendering][pdfjs-d-printing])

Attachments

(4 files)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130528181031

Steps to reproduce:

Open http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.2180v3.pdf in pdf.js
send to high end HP printer with native pdf.


Actual results:

The mathematics in the document is rendered correctly on screen but many mathematical
characters are corrupted-- despite the fact that the printer has native PDF
capabilities


Expected results:

The print system should detect that the printer understands pdf and send the file
to the printer. At least if firefox rasterizes it should give the same result as the
screen version
Component: Untriaged → PDF Viewer
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:24.0) Gecko/20130610 Firefox/24.0, build ID: 20130610031147

WFM on latest Firefox Nightly version, with a Samsung ML 2850 printer: i printed successfully the pages 1- from the document attached in bug description
Reporter, does the issue reproduce with a new profile (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles#os=mac&browser=fx22) and in safe mode (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode#os=mac&browser=fx22)?
Also, can you please try to reproduce using the latest Nightly (http://nightly.mozilla.org/)?
Flags: needinfo?(augustmiles)
I was able to see an issue when printing to pdf on page 4 equation 2.1.  Colleague on windows did not see this issue.
Priority: -- → P3
Whiteboard: [pdfjs-c-rendering][pdfjs-d-printing]
I printed from nightly, with a fresh profile, on 3-july-2013.
Then scanned the page with equation 2.1 of the test-case. As can be
seen the equation is unreadable -- ie the problem is not topographic, but 
simply a total mess. Lexmark C792 printer. Macos 10.8.4

Many other equations are also corrupt
Flags: needinfo?(augustmiles)
Marking New as per Comment 3. We can't reproduce the issue using our printer device (Samsung ML 2850).
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Same here, WFM with FF23 on Win 7 and MS XPS Document Writer. Maybe specific to OSX or some printers?
Is it possible to test from a Win computer with another printer (even virtual)?
Flags: needinfo?(augustmiles)
I only have access to macs...

I opened the print dialogue and selected "open PDF in preview"
 The resulting document when
viewed with the standard Mac document viewer is corrupted... so it is not a specific problem with
a given printer. It seems a general mac problem, tested on latest ff25
Flags: needinfo?(augustmiles)
So the issue is between Firefox with its PDF Viewer and printers with PDF printing features, Firefox should send the PDF to the printer as raw file and not as file rasterized by the PDF Viewer.
Attached image Print-out
Reproduced for me with Firefox 40.0a1 on Mac OS 10.10 and Windows 8.1 printing a PDF to an office Richo MP C2551 printer (see attached screenshot).
Attached file document.pdf
Here's the PDF I was trying to print out.
Note, this is not a Mac-only bug based on comment 10.
OS: Mac OS X → All
(In reply to Anthony Hughes, QA Mentor (:ashughes) from comment #10)
> Created attachment 8598204 [details]
> Print-out
> 
> Reproduced for me with Firefox 40.0a1 on Mac OS 10.10 and Windows 8.1
> printing a PDF to an office Richo MP C2551 printer (see attached screenshot).

Are you sure it's not bug 1108922?
Do you have a good print output if you scroll the PDF before printing it?
I'd like to add to this bug as it looks like it hasn't been updated in awhile.

For a summary, see my original Mozilla support post here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1087684?utm_campaign=questions-reply&utm_medium=email&utm_source=notification

It appears this is both a Mac and PC issue for PDFs printing with invalid/incorrect characters when using FF's pdf.js.

1) This example file prints differently when using pdf.js and viewed with a different orientation than the file was seemingly made for. (Compare to Adobe in Firefox, Chrome, IE, or Safari.)
https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/reading-comp/printables/1st-ball-for-my-dog_TZZMD.pdf

This first issue might be solved if pdf.js offered an Auto Portrait/Landscape option when printing. It does not though; is there or was there ever any plan for this? It seems like all of the other built in PDF readers have it.

2) This example file outputs certain characters on screen differently - and then also prints incorrect - when using pdf.js. (Compare to Adobe in Firefox, Chrome, IE, or Safari.)
https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/addition/printables/addition-i-have-who-has_WNNFQ.pdf

Since Firefox has made pdf.js the default option on newer browser versions, we've dealt with thousands of customer complaints about printing (when the screen output looks perfect). We don't want to steer users away from FF, but we have no other choice as these have been longtime nagging bugs.
On FF 40 & 41 there was a similar bug concerning  's (they were printed as something akin to empty ballot box signs, i.e. the symbol was not recognized by the printer), but I can't reproduce it on FF 42. (See the attachment under bug 1231648 for a file example).
Can confirm issue still exists in FF52 on Windows 8.1
Confirmed on 54.0b10 (32-bits) Windows 10 x64...and it's pretty annoying since, due to the removing of NPAPI plugins support, you can't replace it to other any "build in" Firefox solution...
I'm confirming that this bug still exists as of 63.0.1 (64-bit) on MacOS 10.14.  Printed pdfs do not display mathematical characters correctly.  This is not a printer issue.  Open in Finder option from the print dialog creates a new pdf with corrupt characters as well.
Still happens on FF Developer Edition 64.0b10 (64-bit). Can't print from PDF preview in FF-DE.
Workaround is to save file to file system and open that file with Adobe Acrobat, then print.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 5 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE

original reporter here:

I checked the file https://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.2180v3.pdf, using 67.0a1 (2019-02-25) (64 bits) on macos 10.14.3

I print->open in preview, the result is a total disaster, not a single character of the text can be read, it is worse
than when I did the original report, where the equations were unreadable, but main text was better

thus I would not classified the problem as Resolved.

Looks like the above bug did not fix this issue.

Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: DUPLICATE → ---

this gives an idea of the state of the file, in the main text every character is corrupt.

Note the corruption is immediate -- other bugs (eg 1108922) talk about a 30 second timeout, here I load the file and print as fast as possible (within 5 seconds) and this is the result.

It makes firefox unusable in a scientific context, when a large proportion of technical documents are mismanaged. It makes using Firefox in University labs
a big problem.

Should really be fixed now in Nightly.

Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 5 years ago5 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
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