LO Writer fails to respect page formatting settings when printing

users
#1

I apologise from the start if the subject of this thread has already bee
thrashed to death in this forum. It guess I pay detailed attention to
what is going on only when it affects me directly.

I am discovering a number of page formatting problems with LO Writer
which are nearly driving me nuts. I have tried turning so many knobs and
am beginning to lose my sense of direction!

I am using LO Version: 4.1.6.2 on OpenSuse 13.1

I want to print a two-page A4 document, the first page being portrait
the second landscape. The pages are separated by a page break so that LO
Writer displays them properly. On printing these two pages I face two
problems
1) the second (landscape) page is printed in portrait with the text on
the right being cut off
2) the page margins (default 2x2x2x2 cm) are not respected. At least the
top margin is ignored (= 0 cm) on the printed page. The left margin
seems OK, if a bit tight (=1.9 cm)

Two printers (one Brother, one HP) both give me a similar result.

If I print the document to a pdf file, the result looks perfect on the
screen, and indeed, with respect to the two problems above, even the
printed result looks OK. However, the characters printed out on paper
are not all identical to those in the pdf file, depending on the choice
of font. I have decided to abandon the 'print to file alternative' for
the time being, to concentrate on the direct printing variant.

Can anyone tell me what is going on in LO Writer?

#2

I apologise from the start if the subject of this thread has already been
thrashed to death in this forum. I guess I pay detailed attention to
what is going on only when it affects me directly!

LO Version: 4.1.6.2 on OpenSuse 13.1

I want to print a two-page A4 document, the first page being portrait
the second landscape. The pages are separated by a page break so that LO
Writer displays them properly. On printing these two pages I face two
problems
1) the second (landscape) page is printed in portrait with the text on
the right being cut off

In fact, the problem is even more primitive: it seems that LO refuses to
print any page formatted in landscape.

2) the page margins (default 2x2x2x2 cm) are not respected. At least the
top margin is ignored (= 0 cm) on the printed page. The left margin
seems OK, if a bit tight (=1.9 cm)

Two different printers (one Brother, one HP) both give me a similar result,
confirm that the problem seems to lie with LO.

If I print the document to a pdf file, the result looks perfect on the
screen, and indeed, with respect to the two problems above, even the
printed result looks OK. However, since the characters printed out on paper
are not all identical to those in the pdf file, depending on the choice
of font, I have decided to abandon the 'print to file alternative' for
the time being, to concentrate on the direct printing variant.

Can anyone tell me what is going on in LO Writer and what the solution
could be?

Cheers

Harvey

#3

Thanks for your reply, Tom. My OS is OpenSuse 13.1 (Linux).

Yes, there was a mismatch between one of my printers and its default
setting in the OS. Oddly, this may account for the 'font' error where
some characters in the pdf file were printed wrongly. I corrected the
default format for that printer and the 'print to file' error seems to
have been corrected (explain that one!).

But...the basic problem persists: that printing the page(s) directly
from LO Writer (whether I print the 2-page document (with its page break
switch) or just the landscape page alone with the printer set to
landscape from the start) always renders the landscape page in portrait
(on both printers).

Can't find the knob to turn...many pages and much ink later ;-(

#4

Hi.
I had this in opensuse 12.2. In File>print or printer settings under device you can choose to output in PDF or postscript.
PDF was the default and caused me problems, changing to postscript fixed it.
steve

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
Most printers seem to be hard-coded to leave a 4-5mm "white-space" border
at the edge of pages so if you encroach into that then you'll lose some of
what you are printing. The Pdf route probably attempts to shrink the whole
image a little to account for that.

If LO is set to A4 but the Operating System is set to "US Letter" that
might explain some of the other issues. Err, or the other way around.

Are you using Xp or Win8 or Ubuntu or Mac or which OS? Knowing that might
help others here to set-up the right configs in that and in LO. Do other
documents (or the same ones) have problems in other programs? LO does seem
to have something odd about it's printing configs but hopefully people here
can help!

Good luck and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

Yes, the problem does not exist when printing from a pdf file. The
problem exists only when printing directly to a printer from LO Writer.

#7

Hi.
I am not meaning the printer selection but under properties and then device, printer language type.

steve

#8

Steve,
Great stuff. That did the trick! That was one knob that I hadn't tried,
not exactly intuitive. (My printer configuration had been set to
'Automatic:PDF' which was evidently wrong). Problem solved. Many thanks.

Harvey

#9

I set all my printers, that have that option, to Postscript level 3. That seems to work. As for PDF, well, unless I am exporting to PDF, I find that Ubuntu and Linux Mint printing from LO, as well as some other packages, just causes some sporadic errors in printing to my HP and Canon printers. PS Level 3 seems to have the least formatting errors. It goes double for some printer's duplexing options.

Also, I have a printer that has a large "white space" requirement that clips the images and text that should go into that printer defined margin white space. I get around that with printing in "Borderless Mode". Whether it is borderless letter, borderless tabloid/B, or borderless 13x19, i.e. Super B. There are other sizes like Borderless A4 and borderless legal. It seems to take the page size and add a small amount to the actual paper size and that gets rid of the printer's defined whitespace "required" for printing the paper.