Possible LibreOffice Duplex Printing Bug

users
#1

I'm using the following:
64 bit Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS
LibreOffice Version: 4.3.0.0.alpha0+ Build ID:
be4035d00f37c492494fa7860955b6d0868c7f77
  (This is required because of some bugs in 4.2 and below that affect me)
HP OfficeJet 6700 (w/Dual sided printing set as default)
CUPS 1.5.3
HP-LIP 3.14.4

When printing a single page in LibreOffice apps, using the Operating System
printing dialogs, the following is true:

a) I'm unable to select "current page" on the General tab, but must enter a
specific page number under "Pages."
b) I am able to select "one-sided" on the Layout tab. (Proper behavior)
c) I've tested this in Writer, Draw and Impress. The labelling is somewhat
inconsistent, but they all act the same. I didn't attempt to use Calc just
because I got tired of experimenting.
d) Even so, once the single page is printed, the paper is "sucked back in"
and fed through a second time. Nothing prints of course, but this is
actually a potentially serious problem under some conditions which I'll
explain momentarily.
e) Of importance, I think, is the fact that the left margin (on a landscape
page - obviously this would be the top margin on a portrait page) is larger
than it would typically be for a single sided page. Many printers I've had,
including the current HP-6700 need to "reserve" some space (I guess to grab
the paper) when printing double-sided. This belief by the printer that it is
*supposed* to be printing in double sided mode might help to narrow down
where the difficulty is.

When printing a single page in LibreOffice apps, using the LibreOffice
printing dialogs, the following is true:
a) I AM able to select "current page" and, in fact, the current page (or
slide) number is entered in the box for me. (Proper behavior)
b) The Properties tab seems to "hang" while loading (mostly just the outline
of the new sub-dialog box is displayed), although I've found that if you
click the mouse somewhere on the header, it immediately appears completely.
c) Attempting to select "off" under the Duplex options (i.e. single sided)
causes blinking and flashing that's hard to describe, but I've very rarely
been able to select "off" using the mouse as the cursor/highlight just keeps
bouncing around. If, however, I just use the arrow keys, everything works.
Luckily I'm old enough to remember what the keyboard is for.
d) When the single page is printed, the printer does not attempt to suck the
paper back in. (Proper behavior)
e) On identical pages, using the LibreOffice dialogs permits the entire
content to be printed without cutting off the left edge of the landscape
pages. (Proper behavior)

The reason this is more important than the extra three second or so return
trip through the paper flipper is that Hewlett-Packard (and other printer
manufacturers) do not recommend using double sided printing when using stock
above a certain thickness (e.g. card stock) because doing so raises the
likelihood of jamming the mechanism. With a default setting of double sided
(and why else would I have purchased a double sided printer?), when I need
to print on card stock, the chances of forgetting to set one-sided would be
my fault, but if I set it and the driver ignores that setting, that (I
believe) is a bug.

It would seem that simply using only the LibreOffice dialogs would be a
reasonable work-around, the flashing and needing to move between the mouse
and keyboard unneccesarily is just trading one annoyance for another.

To be fair, this problem might appear as if it could be caused by Ubuntu,
CUPS, HP-LIP, or LibreOffice, but I believe I've narrowed it down to
LibreOffice simply because I don't experience these problems when printing
from several other applications I regularly use. But I acknowledge that it
might be caused by some weird interactions among the aforementioned
applications.

So, should this be reported as a bug? Has anyone else noticed this behavior?
And if it seems like a bug, how do I report it?

Any comments or suggestions would be welcome.

#2

HI :slight_smile:
I think just report it as a bug.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugReport
Would it be easy to layout the 2 lists as a single table to make it easier
to compare the 2 different types of dialogues?

From a very brief and incomplete scan of your post it looks like the OS
dialogues are not working properly and so other programs might suffer the
same problems there. Is there another app you can print a few words from?
Perhaps a text-editor so you know how many pages are in the document and
also know it's free of strange codes?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#3

Hi :slight_smile:
Ahh, you have tried other apps, of course! So, just post a bug-report. :slight_smile:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugReport
It's a good idea to let them know all 3 digits of the version of LO
(possibly 3.5.7?) and whether you downloaded it from the LO website or got
it from the Ubuntu repos (or ppa).

The behaviour you describe is very weird, especially from an Hp Printer.
Drivers for many types of printers are very weird and in Gnu&Linux tend to
be non-existent or horribly broken. Traditionally Hp and Cannon have been
about the only 2 to produce decent drivers. Hp printers also seem to be
built to be solid, reliable work-horses that last for years and years. I
doubt Hplip is at fault.

So, i think i would
1. Radically bump up the "Memory" settings
Tools - Options - Memory (presumably you have over 1Gb Ram, right?)
2. Try a fresh new document with just a couple of words on the page to
make sure no weird formatting is lurking in the document and just test c)
and d)
3. test out renaming your LibreOffice's User Profile
4. Consider trying a different version of LibreOffice

If it turned out to be any of those then i'd just close the bug-report
really fast and close threads here or in Ask LO or where-ever else i'd
asked and let them/us know how you solved it.

Note that one of the advantages of having a choice is that if the 1st
choice doesn't work you can always try the other! It is rare for either to
have any trouble at all. So the one in the repos is good but in the rare
cases it misbehaves it's worth trying to download the one from the LO
website. Similarly the other way around too. If the one from the website
is doing weird things then try the one in the repos! I would definitely
post a bug-report before trying this in order to be more efficient. If
this did solve it then it would be good to have a log of it in the
bug-tracker.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#4

Have you compiled Libreoffice yourself?

My comments below

I'm using the following:
64 bit Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS
LibreOffice Version: 4.3.0.0.alpha0+ Build ID:
be4035d00f37c492494fa7860955b6d0868c7f77
  (This is required because of some bugs in 4.2 and below that affect me)
HP OfficeJet 6700 (w/Dual sided printing set as default)
CUPS 1.5.3
HP-LIP 3.14.4

When printing a single page in LibreOffice apps, using the Operating System
printing dialogs, the following is true:

Do you mean external of LibreOffice, i.e from the Ubuntu File Manager?

a) I'm unable to select "current page" on the General tab, but must enter a
specific page number under "Pages."
b) I am able to select "one-sided" on the Layout tab. (Proper behavior)
c) I've tested this in Writer, Draw and Impress. The labelling is somewhat
inconsistent, but they all act the same. I didn't attempt to use Calc just
because I got tired of experimenting.
d) Even so, once the single page is printed, the paper is "sucked back in"
and fed through a second time. Nothing prints of course, but this is
actually a potentially serious problem under some conditions which I'll
explain momentarily.
e) Of importance, I think, is the fact that the left margin (on a landscape
page - obviously this would be the top margin on a portrait page) is larger
than it would typically be for a single sided page. Many printers I've had,
including the current HP-6700 need to "reserve" some space (I guess to grab
the paper) when printing double-sided. This belief by the printer that it is
*supposed* to be printing in double sided mode might help to narrow down
where the difficulty is.

When printing a single page in LibreOffice apps, using the LibreOffice
printing dialogs, the following is true:

Are you using the Libreoffice dialogs or your systems? See in Libreoffice

Tools -> Options -> Libreoffice -> General

a) I AM able to select "current page" and, in fact, the current page (or
slide) number is entered in the box for me. (Proper behavior)
b) The Properties tab seems to "hang" while loading (mostly just the outline
of the new sub-dialog box is displayed), although I've found that if you
click the mouse somewhere on the header, it immediately appears completely.

Hmm, this behavour has been seen on the "Format Cells" dialog but then only whene compiled with the --enable-kde4 switch. I can't repeat it.

c) Attempting to select "off" under the Duplex options (i.e. single sided)
causes blinking and flashing that's hard to describe, but I've very rarely
been able to select "off" using the mouse as the cursor/highlight just keeps
bouncing around. If, however, I just use the arrow keys, everything works.
Luckily I'm old enough to remember what the keyboard is for.

I can't repeat this.

#5

Nice long description.

First I have a HP 2300dn laser printer. Use to run Ubuntu 12.04/MATE and now testing Linux Mint 16/MATE.

Yes, there is a page "weight" and "stiffness" requirement for reducing jamming of the paper. Sometimes my printer jams when printing the second or third sheet of duplexing. Some printer tell you to be careful with pre-punched paper [i.e. the 3 binder holes are already punched out for your convince]. I have some of that paper myself. It is even a lighter weight that the "standard stock" paper.

My Epson inkjet printer has major duplexing issues with LO till I upgraded the OS to 12.04. There is some issues with some printers. For some reason, LO page printing controls do not get passed "correctly" to the Linux printer driver when it does fine with Windows. IT was mostly the printer driver issue for me.

When was the last time you updated the HPLIP setup. I know that Ubuntu 12.xx does not have the latest that you can find on the HP Linux driver page. You have to download and run a .sh script that "makes" the proper driver setup for your install of Linux. There is complete instructions on how to do this on the site. That helped a lot with some issues I had in the past with lack of certain printer controls in Linux that were there using Windows.

Here is the page to start downloading the file. You need to fill out the info. The current version is HPLIP 3.14.4.
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install_wizard/index.html

Here is the instructions for Ubuntu 12.04 installation of the .sh file
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/install/index.html

ALSO, sometimes the printer issues creep up as a corruption in the user config file/folder. I tend to rename it and allow LO to rebuild a fresh one, like it does with a new "clean" install. Sometimes the printer controls for Linux printer drivers get "stuck" and cannot be changed to a new value, for some reason I never figured out.

The Duplexing of a sheet that has only one page seems "normal" to me. If you set the printer to duplex a document while printing, no matter if it is a single page or some other odd page number [3,5,7,9, etc.], the sheet that has only one page or printed side will be duplexed. Since I take it that your printer prints out the sheets face down, that is what my HP laser printer does. Also, that is what my Canon inkjet printers do. This is normal for LibreOffice, for the Document Viewer, or any other package that produces multi-page documents.

#6

Thanks for the responses ...

I have reported the issue as a bug (for whatever that's worth); the number
is 77265.

I acquired my build from the nightly builds (albeit a while back); I did not
compile it myself.

As for Tom's suggestions:

I have 4G or memory and I quite regularly use LO for very large documents,
so I don't believe that's the issue; in any case I couldn't bump it up any
higher than I have it anyway.

Each of the "test documents" that I used (recall I mentioned trying this
with several different LO apps) was quite small, so I don't think it likely
that the same "weird formatting" appeared in the different documents.

I also mentioned that trying a different version was not really viable for
me, since bugs in the earlier versions fall right in the middle of
capabilities that are most important to me (although apparently not to many
others).

I should mention that Tom's post doesn't sound like he has a whole lot of
confidence in the LibreOffice product, or at least much confidence in the
consistency of the product from version-to-version, build-to-build, etc.
With a product this complex, regression testing is extremely difficult, but
I've used various word processing programs since pre-PC days and, given the
complexity-to-bug ratio, LO is no worse than others (including the market
leader from Redmond).

Have a good day ...

#7

Good points all, but I suspect not my problem.

I almost mentioned during my post that folks should ignore the fact that my
HP-LIP (3.14.4) had been released just the day before my post. It is, in
fact, the "latest and greatest" as they say. But the problem I'm
experiencing has existed for quite a while - I was just too busy to take the
time to write about it.

Regarding 'The Duplexing of a sheet that has only one page seems "normal" to
me', I have to disagree, if only because of the paper weight limitations and
the potential for jamming. I have found, like you, that such behavior is
"common" but it represents, I believe, poor (or thoughtless) coding. The
last two duplex printers I've had (HP: 5400, 6700) correctly (again, in my
view) permit the default behavior to be chosen by the user, but out of the
box, they will print single pages without feeding the sheet through the
duplexer.

Interestingly, my 6700 permits you to specify whether pages are output face
up or face down. I suspect this causes the duplex mechanism to be used for
flipping them (I haven't actually tried this). I'm not sure why this
capability exists, but I always vote for more flexibility so long as
reasonable defaults are set for those who don't care to "fiddle" with
settings.

Of course, comparing all this with the need to recompile my copy of
Telewriter-64 on my Radio Shack Color Computer back in the late 70s so that
I could switch from using my Tandy printer to my new Okidata - - - well, I
suppose things are better now, but it's hard to say several decades's worth
of better :slight_smile:

#8

Thanks for the responses ...

I have reported the issue as a bug (for whatever that's worth); the number
is 77265.

I acquired my build from the nightly builds (albeit a while back); I did not
compile it myself.

As for Tom's suggestions:

I have 4G or memory and I quite regularly use LO for very large documents,
so I don't believe that's the issue; in any case I couldn't bump it up any
higher than I have it anyway.

Each of the "test documents" that I used (recall I mentioned trying this
with several different LO apps) was quite small, so I don't think it likely
that the same "weird formatting" appeared in the different documents.

I also mentioned that trying a different version was not really viable for
me, since bugs in the earlier versions fall right in the middle of
capabilities that are most important to me (although apparently not to many
others).

I should mention that Tom's post doesn't sound like he has a whole lot of
confidence in the LibreOffice product, or at least much confidence in the
consistency of the product from version-to-version, build-to-build, etc.
With a product this complex, regression testing is extremely difficult, but
I've used various word processing programs since pre-PC days and, given the
complexity-to-bug ratio, LO is no worse than others (including the market
leader from Redmond).

Tom is an avid supporter of LO.

There are new and different things coming up with every version. Unfortunately, sometimes fixing one bug can cause another one. The developers are trying to replace all of the legacy coding to more modern languages like Python for ease of development and hopefully reduce the bugs.

I tend to stick with a previous line till the current one goes to .3 or .4. That means use 4.1.5 till 4.2.3 [now out] or 4.2.4. Sometimes I go ahead and test the newest version, but I do not upgrade to the newest, just because it is there.

#9

Good points all, but I suspect not my problem.

I almost mentioned during my post that folks should ignore the fact that my
HP-LIP (3.14.4) had been released just the day before my post. It is, in
fact, the "latest and greatest" as they say. But the problem I'm
experiencing has existed for quite a while - I was just too busy to take the
time to write about it.

Regarding 'The Duplexing of a sheet that has only one page seems "normal" to
me', I have to disagree, if only because of the paper weight limitations and
the potential for jamming. I have found, like you, that such behavior is
"common" but it represents, I believe, poor (or thoughtless) coding. The
last two duplex printers I've had (HP: 5400, 6700) correctly (again, in my
view) permit the default behavior to be chosen by the user, but out of the
box, they will print single pages without feeding the sheet through the
duplexer.

Interestingly, my 6700 permits you to specify whether pages are output face
up or face down. I suspect this causes the duplex mechanism to be used for
flipping them (I haven't actually tried this). I'm not sure why this
capability exists, but I always vote for more flexibility so long as
reasonable defaults are set for those who don't care to "fiddle" with
settings.

I have worked with a 6700 before, but do not own one. My only Officejet is a 7000 wide format one [up to 13 by 19 inch] - same ink, but no duplexing for this model. [I buy the ink from a source on Amazon, where I can get 3+ sets of XL ink for the price one set of HP {or Canon} OEM "standard" ink, and more for the price of the OEM XL ink. Always check ink costs before I buy a new printer.]

I also have HP 2300dn duplexing laser with duplexing, Canon MG6220 inkjet print/scan/copy w/duplexing, Canon MX922 inkjet print/scan/copy/fax w/duplex and auto-feed duplex document scanning. [note: Linux drivers for Canon printer need to be found on their UK site. The USA site does not support Linux as an OS.]

All three of these duplexing printers have duplexing turned off as a default. I turn it on depending on the document's printing needs.

Also I use CUPS-PDF for my default printer, so I can print pages from a browser and skip those pages I do not want/need to print.

Face down for the laser or when I duplex for the inkjets. For the inkjets non-duplexing, I tend to print in reverse so the last page is on the bottom of the paper stack, and the first page is on top.

#10

Hi :slight_smile:
The point about having plenty of Ram is that if you do then you can go into
Tools - Options - Memory
and bump the settings up really high. The defaults are set for very low
Ram machines.

Actually i do have a lot of confidence in LibreOffice and OpenOffice. I've
almost never had any problems on any of the machines i look after nor on
clients machines. This mailing-list has received amazingly few requests
for help given that for the first couple of years it was the only place to
get any user-support for LibreOffice.

The user-base rocketed past 60 million users and is still growing fast.
Most of the problems have been about MS formats changeable and unreliable
nature. Of the remaining problems most have had easy fixes, such as
renaming the User Profile or by getting people to try out styles or just
pointing people to the published guides.

However the starting point in this thread is that something has gone wrong.
My suggestions were fairly generic "magic cure-alls" for any problem.
Luckily you have already had responses from experts in the specific type
of problem but sometimes answers are not forthcoming quite so quickly so
it's good to give people something to explore and "look into" while waiting

In my country there is a phrase "You can't make an omelet without breaking
eggs" and this is very true of writing software. LibreOffice handles this
by putting almost all the innovation into the first release of each new
branch. Subsequent releases in the same branch increasingly focus on
bug-fixes and consolidation.

So 3.5.0 introduced many new features, added greater compatibility with the
ever-changing MS formats. The 3.5.1 probably added some things that hadn't
quite passed alpha or beta testing and similarly with the 3.5.2. However
the 3.5.1 and 3.5.2 were more about fixing bugs. By the 3.5.3 it was
stable enough for rolling out across machines that are not so easy to
reach. By the 3.5.4 it's kinda becoming so dull that innovators are crying
out to try out new innovations and by then the 3.6.0 was ready to "show
off" even newer innovation rapidly getting out there into the real world on
real machines for "early adopters" to enjoy and through the subsequent
x.x.1, x.x.2 and so on gradually making those innovations more stable.

By contrast i still see tons of questions and problems on the many lists
and forums for MS Office 2010 and even 2007. People are still finding tons
of problems with trying to use MS Office 2010 and even 2007, even after
they have installed "Service Pack"s 1 and 2

So, my experience of LibreOffice is that it is an awesome project. It is
incredibly stable if that is what you want or amazingly innovative if that
is what you want. The trick is breaking some old bad habits,
misinformation and misunderstandings that people have become entrenched in
after years of using MS Office (such as questions about "which is best"
with the inevitable answer of "depends what you want"). As people break
free of those MS-ways of thinking they find LO, AOO and all the others are
far better.

I prefer LO because;
1. It lets me do things that people couldn't do if they used MS Office.
2. it lets me find a perfect balance between stability and innovation
3. i know some simple fixes if anything does ever go wrong.
4. streamlining advanced functionality by adding Extensions hasn't even
become an issue yet for me but i like the idea of it. So far the default
configuration does everything i need and more. (errr, i usually bump the
memory settings up but jic rather than because i need to)

Also i really like the community. Generally i hate socialising or dealing
with people but i like the way that so many different people can hold such
differnt views and even struggle and fight against each other but all of it
helps the whole project grow. The Marketing Team are getting bigger and
more impressive displays at a wider range of trade-shows, better materials
such as flyers, the design team do great work, the docs team are quietly
heroic and so on and on.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#11

Hi,

d) Even so, once the single page is printed, the paper is "sucked back in"
and fed through a second time. Nothing prints of course, but this is
actually a potentially serious problem under some conditions which I'll
explain momentarily.

I see this behaviour too on my networked Kyocera LJ, but didn't manage
to track it down to anything I could fiddle with.

The reason this is more important than the extra three second or so return
trip through the paper flipper is that Hewlett-Packard (and other printer
manufacturers) do not recommend using double sided printing when using stock
above a certain thickness (e.g. card stock) because doing so raises the
likelihood of jamming the mechanism. With a default setting of double sided
(and why else would I have purchased a double sided printer?), when I need
to print on card stock, the chances of forgetting to set one-sided would be
my fault, but if I set it and the driver ignores that setting, that (I
believe) is a bug.

You should try printing an envelope and see how often it jams...every
time (at least on OSX) !

So, should this be reported as a bug? Has anyone else noticed this behavior?
And if it seems like a bug, how do I report it?

Yes, please report it.

Alex

#12

So sorry if my comments were misinterpreted - Tom's is one of the few names
that I recognize so I know he's on board.

I am concerned, however, with your suggestion that "modern languages" reduce
bugs. They might make it easier to avoid bugs, or make it easier to spot
bugs, but the only thing that will reduce bugs is analysis, practice,
analysis, practice and more analysis.

Sorry if that seems cynical, but the great Admiral Grace Hopper and her
team, for instance, introduced the idea of subroutines back in the early
1950s in order to help reduce bugs - we later migrated from subroutines to
object libraries and a wide variety of other approaches. The point is not
that these aren't welcome improvements and all, but I think we tend to
depend way too much on the tools/languages/whatever than they deserve
(however good they may be).

The other thing I alluded to was the sheer magnitude of creating any sort of
regression testing suite for something like LO (to say nothing of the space
shuttle or your ATM machines that are mostly running on Windows XP). Having
"users" beat on the product is certainly helpful as well, but certainly not
a comprehensive form of testing or validation.

I certainly wasn't suggesting or implying that Word (for instance) hasn't
addressed some bugs that have been present in their product for over a
decade. One reason I like LO is simply that someone seems to be listening -
a necessary (however insufficient) condition for improving things.

#13

Re: "Also I use CUPS-PDF for my default printer, so I can print pages from a
browser and skip those pages I do not want/need to print."

I hadn't thought of that, but coincidentally I just opened a new ink
cartridge from HP and found a promotion for something they call "Smart
Print," a (seems to be) free downloadable app to do just that (pick and
choose what elements of a web page are printed). Unfortunately, as is fairly
common, there is no Linux version. I wrote to them, of course, suggesting
that their HP-LIP folks might take a look at it to see if they could do a
Unix version.

For anyone who might be willing to write a macro or add-in for LibreOffice,
the site www.hp.com/go/smartprint/offers gives an overview of what the app
does. If such an app could be made to work with web pages and possibly pdf
files, I suspect it might be a pretty popular download ...

#14

Terribly sorry if my ramblings got misinterpreted ...

I am pretty much in full agreement with all your points.

#15

The reason I stated that was due to the fact that with the conversion process from the old legacy coding languages to Python [and such] many of the bugs are tracked down and removed. Also, that helps remove coding conflicts that might arise as the new fixes and features are added to the code base.

Sure, I started out as a mainframe programmer using COBOL, FORTRAN, and a bunch of others. They were good languages. Then more "modern" ones were created that had more procedures and function built in, so the programmer did not have to try and code these "functions" himself/herself. The Object Oriented Programming came into being and changed the way programmers needed to think and create their programs using "objects" of code blocks that were reusable.

Now, the current crop of programmers are taught OOP as the standard and the programming languages got better and better.

As far as I am concerned, OOP coding is easer to use and debug [most times] than the way I had to do things back in my early programming work.

As for bug testing and avoiding, yes analysis and practice is a key to any successful programmer and program package. BUT, the people who test out LO to find bugs may not find them all. Many of them are detected by the users with specific needs and specific usage of LO. I know I found a problem with one model of printer, and other have also with theirs. The RC bug testers do not have access to all of these different printers, OS versions, and the specific user setups that found the bug in the first place.

We all are human and therefor not perfect users and programmers. One misplaced "nil" character where a "space" should be, or some other thing that is very hard to find, could really cause problems "down the line" with bugs that do not seem to be fixable or error messages that do not make sense. I had a single "nil" character problem that "bugged" me and my co-workers for weeks in a PASCAL language program.

As for Windows XP being "dumped" by MS when maybe half of the world still use it and infrastructure is running it and would need a major overhaul to work with Win7 or 8.x, well people will say why did they not do it already. Others would reply - it works well so why fool with it.

Then there are the "Windows is the best computer OS out there" statement when most of the Internet is based on Linux technology computers and other "devices" since it is the most stable platform for such "communication" infrastructure. The Os that is overtaking the PC market, that some people say is killing the PC market, is Android which is a Linux-based OS.

Then there are all these articles I have seen that tell XP users to switch to Linux Mint if you do not want to go to Win7 or 8.x, or there systems "too old and slow" to use those "modern" Windows operating systems. I have a guy who never heard of Linux ask me to convert his old HP system to Linux Mint [with MATE] since he read an article somewhere telling him that was the way to go. I am loaning him an old/slow system with Mint on it so he can play with it to see if he would want to really switch or should I add more ram and such to "help" his system be able to use Win7.

We all have out "pet peeves" about programming languages, bug control, which OS is the best for who, which software is best for what, etc., etc.. I have seen good programs turn towards bad, and bad programs turn around and be good ones to use. I saw GIMP change its "save" options so you can no longer "save" formats like JPG and PNG, so not you have to use a different option to "export to" these standard formats, instead of saving to their "proprietary formats".

I moved from MS Office to OpenOffice.org, to LibreOffice [spring 2010], and seen LO become the best FOSS alternatives to MSO, while MSO keeps messing around with their menu systems and not making their .docx files backward compatible with their older version of MSO.

#16

Re: "Also I use CUPS-PDF for my default printer, so I can print pages from a
browser and skip those pages I do not want/need to print."

I hadn't thought of that, but coincidentally I just opened a new ink
cartridge from HP and found a promotion for something they call "Smart
Print," a (seems to be) free downloadable app to do just that (pick and
choose what elements of a web page are printed). Unfortunately, as is fairly
common, there is no Linux version. I wrote to them, of course, suggesting
that their HP-LIP folks might take a look at it to see if they could do a
Unix version.

Check with the UK sites. Canon, and others, do not support Linux printer drivers in the US web site but has the needed packages/drivers in their UK sites. That is how I get my Canon Printer drivers.

It would be nice to have the HPLIP drivers include all of the options as the Windows drivers do, but that is just wishful thinking. Until there is a larger market of Linux users, it might never happen. I think that it would be good to have better Android printing options to you networked printers. They mostly use a Windows "print server" app running in the background on your Win7 or 8.x systems. I might be nice to print directly from the Android devices with wifi connections to your network and the network connected printers.

Right now, LO does not deal with web browsing, so having an add on to print specific "paper" page sheets of a web site printout, might not be something the developers would need in an Office suite.

Using CUPS-PDF for Linux and doPDF for Windows works fine for that type of job.

What LO might do is make PDF editing a little better within Draw. Or one day make a good PDF to .odt converter add on.

As for HP ink, well I use the ink tank technology ink cartridges instead of the ink and print head in one cartridge technology. Then I use non-OEM ink that is a forth to a half the price of the OEM ink. For Canon printers I get 3 or 4 sets of XL ink for the price of Canon's "standard" OEM ink cartridges, more with the OEM XL ink pricing. About the same with the HP ink I use. Same with the HP non-OEM laser printer toner.