![[TEST] Document Foundation Community](https://communitytest.documentfoundation.org/images/discourse-logo-sketch.png){kind=logo}
Greetings,
Has anyone else noticed that the "Collate" option in the print dialog is not working?!
I wanted to print 2 copies of a 3-page document and I selected "Collate". However, the pages came out 1,1,2,2,3,3 not the 1,2,3,1,2,3 that I expected. So, I unselected "Collate" and it still came out 1,1,2,2,3,3!
Is there some other setting controlling this or is it a bug I should look into?
Running LO 3.5.7.2 under KDE 3 and Linux.
Thanks in advance.
Girvin Herr
Hi 
I think i had a similar problem last week on Windows. The next time i tried pritning it did collate but i have no idea why it didn't work or why it magically startedd workign again. I thought it was just me stuffing-up that one time.
So, it's interesting to hear it might be an intermittent problem. I take it that this is the first time that collating has not worked? Did work previously?
Regards from
Tom
Tom,
Actually, no, this is not the first time I have seen this behavior. I rarely print multiple copies, but I have seen this happen before, within about 6 months. That previous time, I was using LO 3.5.3.
Okay, this is really strange. I just tried it again and got 1,2,1,2,3,3! I might add that I am printing duplex, which may complicate the LO algorithm. I tried another 3-page document and it behaved the same way. I then expanded it to 4 pages and got 1,2,1,2,3,4,3,4. Where 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 are on the same sheets, just opposite sides. Weird. I just tried doing the same thing with a Calc spreadsheet and got the same results. So the problem is with LO, not just Writer.
Girvin
Tom Davies wrote:
The Duplexing is the KEY for me to say - - it may be a combination of the printer and LO settings.
I cannot get LO to duplex properly with my Epson Artisan 810 printer, but it works with my HP Laserjet 2300. There is something going on with LO that is not picking up the duplexing command correctly for the Epson printer.
I am wondering if it is the same for the collating.
I run 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 with MATE desktop environment [with some KDE mixed into it] and currently 3.5.7.
What version of Linux are you using? Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Opensuse, etc., etc.?
Since you run Linux, can you try creating a PDF file for your document and then use the "default viewer" package for PDF to open it. Then go to your printer's options and try to print 2 or 3 copies of the document with the collate option.
ALSO, sometimes I have problems with odd number of pages with duplexing. I have had the last single sided page have the last page of the original document on one side and the first page of the new document on the second side.
What printer are your using? Which driver set? Original-manufacture-style, CUPS-style or GhostScript-style? Manually installed or did the Linux version find the printer driver and installed it automatically?
As I said, I have no problems with straight duplexing of a single copy of a document on my HP LJ 2300, but I have some problems when I make several copies of a document with an odd number of pages. To print a duplex document on my Epson Artisan printer, I create a PDF version and use the default viewer for the PDF files that comes with Ubuntu, and it works fine.
So, it could be the printer, the driver, or LO ability to access the proper print options for the printer itself, or a combination there of.
Try the Export to PDF for one copy of the document and then try and print the duplex and collated document that way. If it works, then it is a LO printer option issue. If it does not work properly, then it is a printer/driver issue. My Epson has a problem with LO and my HP has a driver issue, the last time I tried it - which was a few months back when I was still running Ubuntu 10.04.
I've had that problem with any software I've used;
the only sure way is to set the printer's options -
then it works as it should every time.
I've asked the reason for this only to be given varying responses;
none logical & to the point 
Greetings,
Webmaster,
See below for answers to your questions.
webmaster-Kracked_P_P wrote:
<snip>
What version of Linux are you using? Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Opensuse, etc., etc.?
Slackware 12.2 (K2.6.27)
Since you run Linux, can you try creating a PDF file for your document and then use the "default viewer" package for PDF to open it. Then go to your printer's options and try to print 2 or 3 copies of the document with the collate option.
Now that got interesting! I tried this using Adobe Acrobat Reader to print the PDF file and although I selected 2 copies, collated, I got one copy! I then tried 3 copies and still only got one copy.
<snip>
What printer are your using? Which driver set? Original-manufacture-style, CUPS-style or GhostScript-style? Manually installed or did the Linux version find the printer driver and installed it automatically?
I am using an HP Laserjet 8150DN, CUPS 1.3.11, on "AppSocket/HP JetDirect" and the "HP Laserjet 8150 Series Postscript (en)" driver. When I installed it, CUPS found the printer on my network automagically with the "Find New Printers" option, but I continued to install it manually using the CUPS "wizard". I did not opt for the Foomatic or Gutenprint drivers, thinking they would not be needed, since the printer has Postscript emulation, and a simple Postscript driver should suffice. Now I may go back and rethink that decision. I noticed there are two other drivers I may try: Foomatic and CUPS Gutenprint v5.2.2.
<snip>
Try the Export to PDF for one copy of the document and then try and print the duplex and collated document that way. If it works, then it is a LO printer option issue. If it does not work properly, then it is a printer/driver issue. My Epson has a problem with LO and my HP has a driver issue, the last time I tried it - which was a few months back when I was still running Ubuntu 10.04.
<snip>
Thanks for the help. You may be onto something with the driver. I will try the other drivers and report back.
Girvin Herr
Greetings,
I finally got time to work on this problem. As a result of some helpful replies to my original posting, I have made some progress with this subject problem and I am making this posting in case it may help others.
I changed my CUPS printer driver from the "HP Laserjet 8150 Series Postscript (en)" to the "HP Laserjet 8150 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.2" driver and now I can print the LO-generated PDF file of my 3-page document in Adobe Acrobat reader 9 perfectly. Collation and number of copies (2) are correct. Since Reader 9 now prints the correct number of copies and collation, the problem is no longer the CUPS driver.
With that baseline said, LO printing now prints double the number of copies (4 in this case of specifying 2), but the collation is now correct (1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3). So, there still seems to be something wrong with LO printing in this area. I just tried specifying the number of copies at 3 and got 9 copies!! So this is not merely doubling, it is squaring!! In deference to the forests of the world, I am not going any higher in copies with this testing.
This problem is not a show-stopper for me. I have other ways to print multiple copies. I just found this LO printing action as something unexpected.
Thanks to everyone who replied to my original posting.
Girvin Herr
Girvin R. Herr wrote:
As I stated many times before [or tried to get the words out with my stroked brain interfering sometimes], LO will not work with the duplex of my Epson Artisan printer, but will for my HP Laserjet 2300n printer that has the duplex option included. I have used several drivers for the Epson both with Ubuntu 10.04 and 12.04. But no go.
SO, what I do most of the time is create a PDF document from Writer and then open that PDF file and print the duplex document that way.
I have, with a few older HP printers and with Windows drivers [Win95-Vista] have had problems with collation one and a while. But with my Ubuntu desktop and the "default PDF viewer", I have not seen any collation problems at all. Of course, I hardly ever tell my printers to print many copies or a 2+ page document and NEVER tell it to print 2+ copies of duplex document with an odd number of pages. I have seen page 3 of copy 4 and page 1 of copy 5 on the same sheet of paper.
I do know that ever since LO came out, and I have been reading the lists, I have seen people have problems with certain printers not having some of their printing features, like duplex, not work with LO, but work with packages other than LO. It is up to the developers to get the print commands in LO and the commands from the OS commands for the printers to match up. The problem is that the developers do not have all of the 1,000 or more printers to test on.
Hi all,
with packages other than LO. It is up to the developers to get the
print commands in LO and the commands from the OS commands for the
printers to match up. The problem is that the developers do not have
all of the 1,000 or more printers to test on.
I second those remarks. The origins of most of the print problems that
people are experiencing today (the bug list is already quite long) lies
in the decision to switch to CUPS as the printing engine rather than
Postscript. This decision was made sometime during OpenOffice.org 3.3
development by the then project warden Sun/Oracle. The problem is that
CUPS is not homogeneously implemented across all OSes and all
distributions, some distribs patch their version of CUPS quite heavily,
some use a combination of CUPS and Gutenprint and some just do their own
thing. The upshot of this is that many of the printer driver features
that could previously be hand-tailored by editing a PPD file are no
longer supported for certain printer models. So now, users are dependent
on the CUPS printer driver being capable of supporting all those options
and that those options are interpreted correctly by the CUPS engine used
in LO (which has its own bugs/deficiencies) - sigh.
There has been some discussion on the developer list as to what to do
about the problems, but unfortunately, I didn't seem to be able to draw
any conclusions from what had been decided.
Alex
Greetings,
I finally got time to work on this problem. As a result of some helpful replies to my original posting, I have made some progress with this subject problem and I am making this posting in case it may help others.
I changed my CUPS printer driver from the "HP Laserjet 8150 Series Postscript (en)" to the "HP Laserjet 8150 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.2" driver and now I can print the LO-generated PDF file of my 3-page document in Adobe Acrobat reader 9 perfectly. Collation and number of copies (2) are correct. Since Reader 9 now prints the correct number of copies and collation, the problem is no longer the CUPS driver.
With that baseline said, LO printing now prints double the number of copies (4 in this case of specifying 2), but the collation is now correct (1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3). So, there still seems to be something wrong with LO printing in this area. I just tried specifying the number of copies at 3 and got 9 copies!! So this is not merely doubling, it is squaring!! In deference to the forests of the world, I am not going any higher in copies with this testing.This problem is not a show-stopper for me. I have other ways to print multiple copies. I just found this LO printing action as something unexpected.
Thanks to everyone who replied to my original posting.
Girvin Herr
You might try using localhost:631 to access the CUPS system directly and see if there any settings that you use there.
Hi,
Debian 5, CUPS, Brother HL6050D
I solved printing problems by
1) add a cups-filter to the ppd, that manipulates the final postscript file
(in my case I added a PJL reset command)
2) use a basic makro (see oo bug 88333)
arg(1).name="Collate"
arg(1).value=true
arg(0).name="CopyCount"
arg(0).value=1
oDoc.print (arg())
Have a wonderful day
W.
Greetings,
I know this is an old thread (11-12-12), but I think I found the solution to this problem. When looking at the print dialog tabs in LO 3.6.4.3 recently, I discovered an option that works. It is in the "Options" tab. Check "Create single print jobs for collated output." When checked, the print output does collate copies as expected [1,2,3,blank,1,2,3,blank] in duplex - at least it worked for me on the same file I first talked about back in November.
Girvin Herr
webmaster-Kracked_P_P wrote:
I will have to try it sometime soon on my two duplexing printers.
Background:
There has been a number of threads about duplex problems printing from LO.
On an Ubuntu 64-bit 10.04 and 12.04 OS, an Epson Artisan 810 printer would not duplex, while the HP 2300dn laser would, when printing from LO Writer. The Artisan will print duplex using the default PDF reader or all of the other packages installed in the Ubuntu computer.
Solution:
Here is the solution that was made for the Artisan printer.
First I installed 3 different drivers for the printer to see if any of these would solve the problem:
1] epson-inkjet-printer 1.0.0-1lsb3.2 (Seiko Epson Corporation LSB 3.2)
2] epson-inkjet-printer-escpr 1.2.2-1lsb3.2 (Seiko Epson Corporation LSB 3.2
3] CUPS+Gutenprint (OpenPrinting LSB 3.2) v5.2.7
None of them would print duplex by default using LO.
I went to the Options - LibreOffice - Print section and there was nothing there to help.
Then I started to go through all of the options.
There was one option I did not try
Options - LibreOffice - General
Print dialogs
Use LibreOffice dialogs
This checkbox is not checked by default.
I decided to try it. Well, it worked.
Why using the default setting does not work, I do not know. Why LO does not use the default Print dialogs [for Ubuntu and Windows XP/Vista] like all the other packages do, I do not know. You would think that if one printer works with the duplexing, the other would as well. If LO used the "default/standard" printing dialogs, would it work, maybe.
Also for the print driver options:
the #2 driver - Escpr driver does not have any duplex option.
#1 and #2 do not have any resolution options other than 300 by 300 DPI, while #3 has many, many DPI resolution options.
the CUPS+Gutenberg - OpenPrinting - driver seems to have the best color results for all three printer drivers.
SO
the default in the General dialog does not work for printing duplex for several printers, mine included.
Why I did not check this box before? I was told, when LO first came out, to use the defaults and not use the LO dialogs for Load/Save and Printing.
Well, it was a simple fix. Whether it would work for the other printers that have duplexing issues, I do not know.