Okular printing (WAS: Re: libkdeprint)

[Kurt Pfeifle]

John Layt wrote:

> Printing a Landscape PDF document and selecting Landscape in the Print Dialog 

For a corrct PDF document, you should never, ever need to select Landscape
in the printing dialog.

Even if it *appears* as landscape on your screen, once you print it, the
"image-to-sheet" orientation should automatically fit. And once you take
out a sheet of printed paper from the tray, you are free to turn it into
every direction you want or need in order to read its content.

*If* you select Landscape, you'd have to expect that the image's orienta-
tion in relation to the physical sheet is rotated by 90 or 270 degrees.
(It *may* be that you want/need that for a specific purpose of your printing,
but usually you don't).

So what is the "landscape" setting for? There are two different cases:

 (a) pagesheet-based documents.
     "landscape" here rotates the orientation of the *page image* in
     relation to the physical page sheet. This case applies to PDF docu-
     ments, since these are page based. Usually you shouldn't change the
     orientation of PDF's page image in relation to the media sheet you
     print it on.

 (b) documents that aren't tied to the concept of a page sheet.
     But these sometimes need to be printed, and printing implicitely
     has to convert these document into a pagesheet layout. This applies
     to text or HTML documents (also spreadsheets). "landscape" in these
     cases tells the printfile generating program how the layout should
     look like if the pagesheet is viewed in landscape mode.

Once a case (b) has completed, the document's printjob file (PS or
PDF) is converted to a case (a) file. It then does not make sense
(but in rare cases where you want to fix something, or need a specific
effect on the printout) to treat it as a case (a)

> results in a correctly rotated page but cut-off at Portrait length.

Are you seeing something like this:

+--------------------------+ <--- sheet top right corner
|                          |
|                          |
|                          |
|                          |
|                          |
|                          |
|..........................| <-- top margin of image on sheet
|.                         |
|.  Here's my landscape tex|
|.  (but it's cut off...)  |
|.                         |
|.                         |
|.                         |
|.                         |
|.                         |
|.                         |
|..........................||
+--------------------------+

> Instead, 
> selecting Portrait in the Print Dialog produces perfect results.

That's to be expected. It's the same with all correctly working PDF
viewers when printing.

> I also get the same problem in QPainter/QPrinter based backends (e.g. jpegs 
> and comicbook) with landscape images, and I'm getting it printing anything 
>>from the Qt4 Assistant in landscape.  Printing from KDE3 or QT3 Assistant is 
> fine. I'm using openSuse 10.3, Qt 4.3.2.  

Look at the KDE bugzilla too:

   http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=139740#c5 ff.

-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
A RICOH Company  ...........................  D-70327 Stuttgart/Germany