Problem printing an .xls file

The file referenced below prints correctly under OpenOffice Writer
3.2.1, but not with LO 3.4.5.
  (Tried on 2 different PC's, two different printers.)

Under LO 3.4.5, although a Print Preview is complete, the actual printed
page is missing several inches of text on the right.
  (The rightmost column that is correctly printed has the header
"H.C. Points".
    All that appears to the right of that are continuations of the
horizontal rulings, and the "Exp and (below) "We" text of the rest of
the document.)

Before I raise this in a Bug report, could someone here confirm that
they have the same problem, please?

       http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10969499/scorecard.xls

Hi Maurice,

When I print it on a Samsung ML-1710 laser, it prints fine except there
is no left hand margin. The cells in Column A are right against the left
edge of the paper. I saved it in ods format, and had the same thing.
Then I inserted a new column A, so that all of the other columns moved 1
column to the right. I made the new column .49 inches wide, and it
printed fine.

Don

Worked fine for me, except that the rightmost horizontal line is missing.
Running
Windows 7 Ultimate
LO 3.4.5
HP Officejet 6500A Plus Printer

Not rightmost *vertical* line?

Windows, Linux, Don?

I'm sorry! Ubuntu 11.10 with LibreOffice 3.4.5 downloaded from LibreOffice.

Yes, the right most vertical line is missing. Sorry about that.

It prints fine on my iMac using LO 3.5rc, with a Canon 4700 printer.
All the lines are present and there is a 17mm margin on both sides.

Tink.

Same problem reported om Mandriva and Mageia - in my case at least
with a fully-updated Mandriva 2010.2 PowerPack.

Seems what is happening is that although LO-Calc's Print Preview shows
the file in Landscape, it is sending a Portrait image to the printer,
which then barfs after reaching the "H.C." column.

Will raise bug report...

Someone in the Mandriva newsgroup thought you might be interested in
his comments:

" Can't help except perhaps indirectly, sorry.... File prints in LO
3.4.4 here if I have margins set to 0 and text size is right (small
enough), on two printers and computers wildly different and in Fedora
Core 16 for Linux side (modern CUPS and Gutenprint). Possibly a
Mandriva-side issue, but the single data point from Ubuntu could be even
margin defaults in drivers from older driver sets (old printer for
example).

I remember having a Epson C84 inkjet printer, and the page as driven by
a much older CUPS than 2.5.6 with Gutenprint only very limitedly linked
in had page offset in mapping (even on test page) with page offset to
left by almost an inch until I told the developer about the problem and
he and I engaged in a month-long conversation in email and the then
active linuxprinting.org (Sponsored by the then Mandrake, one of the
things that drew me to that distro to buy was their sponsored
linuxprinting.org and sponsorship of a bunch of Linux printing driver
devs) posts that ended up with the printer driver working in
CUPS-Gutenprint. I would tell him how much I had to adjust page
manually in page offsetting, and he would default that into code.

No internal offset (which during development and adjustment varied a
lot as to which way and how much) and exaggeration of size of font and
spaces and underline widths which would give a cutoff on right given
that CUPS treats everything as if it had 300 dots per inch until much
more recently with Gutenprint doing a lot of the background drivere
work for more than 1000 printers, and HPijs doing driver work for many
HP lasers. General rule, the more modern CUPS and Gutenprint are for
printing, the better more drivers are. Printer driver developers are
poor, so they tend to not afford to buy a lot of printers themselves--
the C84 was very popular in US, less so in Europe. Now that the printer
driver devs are getting more feedback faster, drivers are better faster.

He had an Epson C82 to use, donated to him, but the C84 had enough
differences that a driver had to be extremely adjusted to work with a
C84. He changed things slowly, told me when a new update was ready, and
I downloaded the updated driver set often-- I wanted to not spend
$200.00 US on a good printer to replace my C84.

The Ubuntu user might possibly benefit from this somewhat long post, so
I include it here for forwarding. Mandriva of PowerPack or 2010
varieties without CUPS and Gutenprint and driver sets updated to
current, might also have such issues."

As I said earlier, OpenOffice prints the file perfectly...

Hi :slight_smile:
Just in case people want to follow the thread on the Mandriva lists then
this is the link
http://groups.google.com/g/8c17fdac/t/3c7eaccb9ec03dcd/d/ce0c3d176d8a699a

I think the problem has been solved but i'm not completely clear.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

See: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45340

A workaround has been found by 'TJ' in the Mandriva newsgroup:

   When in LO's 'print file', go in to Printer Settings and change
'PDF' to 'Postscript' (any level).

(Unfortunately the change does not stick, unless the document is
changed and Saved.)

The reason why OpenOffice is able to print the file perfectly is that
it already uses Postscript in the output.
  For background to that, see:

  https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=94173
   
where the proposed change from Postscript to PDF (to solve *other*
problems) did not make it into OpenOffice before it ws handed over to
Apache, whereas they *did* make it into LO!

Actually they did indeed make it to OOo-dev 3.4.0
DEV300m106 (Build:9582) as that build has the same issue as LO.

That said... I wouldn't shoot the messenger in the case of 94173; Till
Kamppeter pretty much rocks IMO & if he's aware of the situation you can
pretty much bet that he'll work with you to resolve.

I suspect that your issue is the same as John Jason Jordan's issue
("Printer always selects "PDF" instead of Postscript" thread).

A possible workaround:

Open spadmin (printer administration) & select the printer
'Properties|Device|Printer Language type: PostScript Level 2. Close
spadmin & open LO (3.3.x or 3.4.x) and you should be ok for that
printer. You can check by closing & reopening LO & 'File|Printer
Settings><printer>|Properties|Device|'.
- In LibreOffice 3.3.4 you should see 'from device driver'.
- In LibreOffice 3.5.0rc2 you should see 'PostScript Level 2'.

Again, it's a possible workaround & certainly not a fix. But give it a
try & see if it works for you.

Actually they did indeed make it to OOo-dev 3.4.0
DEV300m106 (Build:9582) as that build has the same issue as LO.

   OK - thanks for the update!

Till
Kamppeter pretty much rocks IMO & if he's aware of the situation you can
pretty much bet that he'll work with you to resolve.

  Fingers crossed he will appear, then...

A possible workaround:

Open spadmin (printer administration) & select the printer
'Properties|Device|Printer Language type: PostScript Level 2. Close
spadmin & open LO (3.3.x or 3.4.x) and you should be ok for that
printer.

   That worked fine - many thanks!

Just one concern. Now it's OK for e.g. .xls files, which files might
then cause problems (because now using Postscipt instead of PDF)?
   Presumably whatever types caused the original change from Postscript
to PDF?!
   So what are *they*?

Hi Gary,

NoOp wrote (04-02-12 04:13)

I suspect that your issue is the same as John Jason Jordan's issue
("Printer always selects "PDF" instead of Postscript" thread).

A possible workaround:
[...]

Thanks for the info and more :slight_smile:

I've added some info & issues to the 3.5 most annoying one:
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37361#c173

Cheers,
Cor

BTW: people that like to help a bit more regular with bug triage: feel welcome to help :slight_smile: