[Kde-print-devel] [Bug 142557] New: Poster command doesn't work; ghostscript's poster expects EPS but kprinter sends it PS

[Tristan Miller]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142557         
           Summary: Poster command doesn't work; ghostscript's poster
                    expects EPS but kprinter sends it PS
           Product: kdeprint
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: SuSE RPMs
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: kde-print-devel kde org
        ReportedBy: psychonaut nothingisreal com


Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.5.5)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs

Kprinter allows the user to enlarge a document into a poster printed on multiple pages.  It apparently does this by feeding the raw PostScript document to the ghostscript "poster" command.  However, "poster" expects EPS files, not plain PostScript files.  As a result, many (or most) documents get mangled and don't print properly.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Invoke kprinter somehow (through a KDE application's print command, or through the command line).  For the purposes of this bug report, assume that I have invoked it on the command line to print a file input.ps.
2. Select any printer.  For the purposes of this bug report, assume that I am using "Print to file (PostScript)" and specify the output file output.ps.
3. Properties->Poster
4. Check the "Print poster" box and adjust the other settings to taste.
5. OK
6. Print

Observed behaviour:
bar.ps contains a bunch of nonsense which cannot be viewed or printed properly.  It contains exactly the same data as if the Ghostscript poster command had been run on foo.ps.

Expected behaviour:
poster apparently expects encapsulated PostScript as its input.  (Quoth the man page: "It expects as input a generic (encapsulated) postscript file".)  kprinter should have first converted the data to EPS (via ps2epsi, for example), and then passed this EPS file to poster.  When it's done this way, the output file (say, output2.ps) is a correct multipage poster.