I wanted to print a pdf of my daughter’s schedule and the page is set to portrait mode but should be landscape. When I try to print it from either Okular or Adobe, the text is all smooshed and unreadable. I’ve tried to get the page to be rotated using pdftk-qgui and it seemed to rotate but the printing result was the same, the text was squished and unreadable. I also tried printing it from Adoble PDF (not rotated) and it printed the schedule but the result was in portrait mode and very small and hard to read.
These are the commands I tried (as directed) from the terminal:
To Rotate the First Page of a PDF to 90 Degrees Clockwise:
pdftk in.pdf cat 1E 2-end output out.pdf
To Rotate an Entire PDF Document’s Pages to 180 Degrees:
pdftk in.pdf cat 1-endS output out.pdf
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘the page is set to portrait mode but should be landscape.’ If you mean the PDF has been produced in portrait mode when it should have been produced in langscape mode, you need to sort out the options in the program that produced it.
If you mean that it was produced in landscape but you cannot get it to print in lahdscape, then install KPDF (kdegraphics3-pdf) from software.opensuse.org if you have no other KDE3 programs installed. There is a known bug in Okular relating to landscape printing but the fact that you have the problem in Adobe suggests that the problem lies in the program that generated the PDF and not in the viewer.
I just got KPDF and I looked at the document and the properties information says:
Producer: IText 2.1.4 (by lowagle.com)
Format: PDF v. 1.4
Creator: Genesis SIS Powered by Forge-Tech, Inc.
When I preview the document from within KPDF, it seems to be using Okular for that. So, I’m assuming that if I try to print it out from within KPDF, I will have the same problem.
Perhaps that known bug in Okular has hit Adobe (or has done something that seems to have affected Adobe), could that be so?
All KDE programs use some common libraries but KPDF is not the same as Okular and will print landscape PDFs without any problems; Okular has a known problem in this area; there is a suggested workaround but I have never been able to get it to work.
I am also not clear what the format of the original document is from which you wanted to create a landscape PDF. That may be where the problem lies.
I’ve had this happen to me in Acroread, and in my case, it was because I had the wrong setting applied under ‘page scaling’ in the print properties. Apologies, I can not remember any more specific details than that, but I am confident if you play with those settings you will figure out the correct one for your case.
On 2011-08-06 16:36, gymnart wrote:
> Perhaps that known bug in Okular has hit Adobe (or has done something
> that seems to have affected Adobe), could that be so?
No.
But both print via the same kde libraries. You might try printing directly
from the command line.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Printing from KPDF did not work. The results were the same, the schedule table itself looked ok but the text was very stretched and looking like it had been squashed.
I looked at the properties tab from within Acroread for the document and this is what I found:
Page scaling: default
Fonts: Helvetica
Type: 1
Encoding: ANSI
Actual font: Adobe Sans MM
I’m beginning to think, could this be due to a problem with fonts? I just checked and I do have Helvetica and Adobe Sans MM.
As for the page scaling: default, how do I find out what that is?
‘page scaling’ in the print properties tab were grayed out so I couldn’t change anything there.
Sorry, I was looking in a different spot. (File > Properties)
Yes, in Print > Page Handling I do see what you described but none of those do what I need.
I have tried the Auto Rotate and Center option but that does not work either.
Whatever my landscape pdf printing problem is, it is affecting all my pdf readers.
Thanks. I’ll take a look at this when I get home from work.
Also, if this is a pdf file (or some other file format) is there any chance of you posting the file on the Internet, so that I can download it and try to print it and see if there is some strange embedded character sequence that is causing the acknowledged very annoying hiccup in printing properly ?
But off hand, I recall I needed to use “shrink to printable area” because “fit to printable area” caused the problem you noted (auto rotate and center also needed - or possibly some other setting to obtain the rotate - I can’t recall).
This one was tricky. I wasted a couple of pages until I figured it out. When I opened it up in Adobe acroread, it came up in a ‘landscape’ presentation, even though ‘portrait’ was selected. I chose ‘shrink to printable area’ and I obtained a horrible print, with only part of the page visible as page was rotated 90 deg from what I wanted (and so part of print job chopped off). So I then tried ‘fit to printable area’ and the it was still rotated 90 deg the wrong way ! …
I puzzled over that, and then though, what the heck, there must be some code embedded in the pdf that is causing this ? So I then switched back to ‘portrait’, I printed the document, and it came out nicely in ‘landscape’ !! Go figure.
For some reason with landscape selected, everything was rotated 90 degrees in acroread (incorrectly) when printing. So I then chose portrait and I obtained a landscape print ! There is something wrong with how the PDF was created IMHO.
I’ve just successfully printed it with evince. Printing with evince was much easier, as I wasted no paper and got it right the 1st time and when exploring a different setting …
and I also tried again, for the fun of it, and selected ‘portrait’ yet it still printed ok in landscape (despite portrait being selected). IMHO there is something strange inside that PDF specifying print settings: http://thumbnails41.imagebam.com/14414/76a191144135737.jpg](ImageBam)
again, it printed ok in landscape (despite portrait being selected).
I then printed with okular. When I had ‘landscape’ selected, again it printed the wrong way (90 deg rotated). When I selected ‘portrait’ I obtained a proper landscape print . There is something strange with this PDF IMHO (again, here is okular settings that worked): http://thumbnails50.imagebam.com/14414/72a9f1144137224.jpg](ImageBam)
ie again, I needed to select portrait to get this PDF to print in landscape. It appears both acroread and okular do not like this PDF. Evince has no problem. But it IS possible to print properly with all 3 apps.
I forgot to mention - that was with openSUSE-11.3 … < sigh > … I should have done this on an openSUSE-11.4 test partition (I have not moved to 11.4 yet).
OK, I booted to my 32-bit openSUSE-11.4 LXDE on my sandbox PC. I printed with Evince, and then with Okular. I obtained the same behaviour under openSUSE-11.4 as I did under 11.3. Again, with judicious (confusing in case of Okular) settings, I can print the document properly in landscape mode.
I don’t see any point in providing the settings screen prints, as the settings were the same.
I hope you are able to progress with this information.
Hi gymnart, I obtained the PDF you sent by email. And as I suspect you have guessed, it was not difficult to print in landscape, with it appearing properly. Having encountered the .pdf you posted earlier in fact made it easy to obtain the correct settings.
First I printed with ‘evince’. ‘evince’ JUST WORKS for printing. I then printed in acroread, and it printed at right angles (90 degrees off) when landscape mode was selected. So the obvious (to me anyway) thing to try next is select ‘portrait’ mode and see what happens. When I did that it printed properly at landscape mode. So both evince and acroread work (where acroread needed that ‘trick’).
Reference evince settings: I selected landscape mode, and it printed. Evince is in the OSS repository. … and that makes me think something … and apologies if you know this already, but when it comes to a subject that interestests you wrt an application, simply go to YaST > Software > Softwaremanagement > search and ensure ‘description’ is selected as a search filter criteria, and then type in the subject of interest, … ie ‘dvd’ or ‘player’ or ‘editor’ or ‘pdf’ … if you had typed in ‘pdf’ you would see that ‘evince’ is available from the OSS repository.