I have a fresh load of SUSE 12.1 with KDE and am having problems with Thunderbird printing only certain emails, specifically Paypal invoices. It is as if all the black print is gone but the colored printing and horizontal black lines print ok. As far as I know all other printing from this machine is ok and the printer is set up correctly and prints test pages. This seems specific to Thunderbird (on this machine is 10.0.2) and only with these Paypal messages. Weird.
I have TB 10.0.2 running on 12.1 as well.
I just tried printing a PayPal Invoice to my B&W LaserJet1100, prints OK here.
I do see that that much of the specific info on the Invoice (My name, what I bought, etc) is in gray on-screen,.
Gray and colored type seem to have transitioned to Grayscale OK for me.
If you print to a file (as pdf), does the pdf look OK?
I believe I have Paypal set up to send me HTML emails.
I tried View-Message source, I don’t see anything obvious but it is sort of hard to read - almst looks like both a plain text and HTML version are sent, TB choosing to display the HTML.
Thank you for trying that.
I printed to a pdf as you suggested. The pdf looks fine on-screen but when I print that (from Okular) it looks the same as if I printed it from TB, missing most of what I will call the body text. However, I did take that pdf to a Windoze machine and it prints fine from there and looks like the output of TB used to look (on another system running 11.4. So at least I have a work around although extra work. Here is a picture of what I am seeing. The problem printout is on the left, the way it is supposed to look is on the right.
So problem is common to Okular and TB.
Somewhat smells like a font issue.
Do you have the fetchmsttfonts package loaded (from 12.1 OSS repo)?
I believe it was the 11.3 to 11.4 transition where SuSE no longer installed MS fonts by default.
I had some font translation/replacement issues, loading the ttfonts fixed it.
Without thinking, I automatically loaded them for 12.1
Thank you. It was not loaded, so I loaded fetchmsttfonts. I even restarted TB and the computer but it still prints the same.
Hmmm, I’m sort of out of ideas.
I played a bit with my invoice in Thunderbird.
I Tried View-Message Body as and tried Simple HTML and Plain Text.
Both gave me all the important info, but not as pretty. One (or both) might print for you in the interim.
Looking again at the message source (View-Message Source) I only see
font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
called for, in various sizes. Pretty generic stuff.
Looking in Personal Settings-System Administration-Font Management I see both Ariel and Adobe Helvetica installed on my system, as well as DejaVu-Sans, wich I believe is the KDE or SuSE default sans font.
Hang around, hopefully a printing guru will stop by and lend a hand.
And probably an obvious question someone will ask - what printer and driver are in use?
Do you have more than one printer - all do same?
Only one printer now, an Epson Wp-4020 with latest Linux driver (dated last week for SUSE 11.4+ they say on their website).
Thank you for the other work arounds. I just printed another by passing a print pdf to a Windoze machine.
Did you ever look in TB in Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Config Editor? It is pretty scarey in there. The reason I ask is that there are MANY lines to do with older HP printers like 722 and 5400 and then a group of lines specific to my WP-4020, near the end. I don’t know anything about TB Config Editor but it seems to tell TB about printing capabilities plus a whole lot of other things. It can be edited but I haven’t tried to do so.
I look around on occasion.
I looked in mine and see only references to my HP1100, so what is there has been customized for the environment.
You can also edit this info directly at /home/user/.thunderbird/profile-in-use/pref.js
If you keep your old /home between upgrades(as I do) perhaps something incorrect has crept in here.
I see that the create date on my ~/.thunderbird directory is 9/7/2010!
However, it would seem the problem is upstream of TB since Okular has the same issue.
Interesting. Mine is a fresh 12.1 load and I did not keep /home but only copy over the contents of a couple of the folders (.thunderbird, Documents and Downloads) only to the new system. I looked in there prompted by something I found on the web about curing printer problems with an HP. I will look in the 11.4 system Config Editor and explore the file you suggested. Carefully. Thanks.
On 2012-03-17 12:46, georgeinacton wrote:
> Here is a
> picture of what I am seeing. The problem printout is on the left, the
> way it is supposed to look is on the right.
>
> [image: http://www.ffwdm.com/test/printing-problem.jpg]
>
Try printing to postscript file (.ps), then display the file with “gv”, and
print it from there. There could be problems in KDE with pdf printing.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
I am trying that.
I had to install “gv” first. That went ok and I can load the .ps and see it properly in gv. When I ask it to print all, it offers the print command lpr which fails on my system.
On 2012-03-17 18:56, georgeinacton wrote:
>
> I am trying that.
>
> I had to install “gv” first. That went ok and I can load the .ps and
> see it properly in gv. When I ask it to print all, it offers the print
> command lpr which fails on my system.
How exactly does it fail? You can not expect help unless you explain what
happens in detail.
Try to print the same postcript file from command line, using lpr and lp.
Post here full command and output using code tags.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
This is how gv fails:
http://www.ffwdm.com/test/gv-print-fail.jpg
Trying to use the lpr and lp commands (don’t know the syntax):
george@linux-12-1:~> cd Documents
george@linux-12-1:~/Documents> lpr mozilla.ps
lpr: Error - no default destination available.
george@linux-12-1:~/Documents> lp mozilla.ps
lp: Error - no default destination available.
george@linux-12-1:~/Documents>
George
UPDATE: I did not have a system default printer set, now I do. The Paypal invoice prints fine as a postscript file from both gv and from the command line.
On 2012-03-18 11:46, georgeinacton wrote:
> This is how gv fails:
>
> [image: http://www.ffwdm.com/test/gv-print-fail.jpg]
Gosh. That’s a good error message. You did post what it said, after all…
> Trying to use the lpr and lp commands (don’t know the syntax):
Ah, but there is a manual 
No, it is fairly simple, just the command and the file.
> Code:
> --------------------
> george@linux-12-1:~> cd Documents
> george@linux-12-1:~/Documents> lpr mozilla.ps
> lpr: Error - no default destination available.
> george@linux-12-1:~/Documents> lp mozilla.ps
> lp: Error - no default destination available.
> george@linux-12-1:~/Documents>
> --------------------
No default printer in the system, which is probably typical. I see you
changed that on another message - but it is also possible to specify the
printer in the command line (-P printer with lpr, -d with lp).
> UPDATE: I did not have a system default printer set, now I do. The
> Paypal invoice prints fine as a postscript file from both gv and from
> the command line.
So, your print system is capable of printing, and you at least have a way
to verify the print (gv) and print without going to the windows machine.
That’s progress! 
I’m not familiar with how KDE prints, so I don’t really know if you can
change something to make it work with a click.
You can perhaps print to PDF file, and look at the file to see if the file
at least is correct. I think you did say this on a previous message :-?
…] Yep, I see you did. The PDF looked fine, but printed wrong from
okular. You could also try another PDF viewver program (I suggest xpdf),
and print from it, and then you can do a full report in bugzilla. But I
have the feeling this is an already reported problem with no solution, I
have the vague recollection of having heard of it previously, that’s why I
suggested postscript.
I think there is a tentative CUPS upgrade that solves some problems, but I
don’t remember if this is one of them.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
I am still having this issue. I can’t print the stuff I get from Paypal and Ebay directly to my new Canon WP-4020 printers (now two of them) from Linux SUSE 12.1 since the important part of the pages (seems like a font issue) is not printed from Thunderbird or Firefox or Okular (see earlier postings).
SUSE is my main web interface here. Printing works from all the Windows machines here without issue but I don’t get my mail on those.
Printing from 12.1 also does not work if I print to a .pdf and then print from Okular. Same issue - missing stuff on the page.
Thanks to the help I got here, I have a work around that involves printing to a .ps file and then printing that file with gv. It works but it is five or six steps when only two should get my my printout.
If anyone has any other ideas about what I could try or where I could look - thank you!
Your problem sounds very similar to the problem described here:
The problem in the above thread was that Firefox/Ocular would not print barcoded mailing labels from FedEX/UPS and this issue was eventually reported to be a bug in ghostscript 9.05. While the problem in that thread was originally reported with an HP8500 printer, another user observed the same problem (post #7) with an Epson InkJet printer. Since you are using an Epson printer, my sense is that you are possibly experiencing the same bug. If so, I posted a workaround in post #6 in the above thread.
FYI,
Gordon
Thank you Gordon. I would not have known to look at /var/log/cups/error_log but now that I do, it is huge, with many records.
I will get into it a little later. Not completely sure I understand so may have more questions.
George
George,
Did you ever try the fix as suggested in post #17 above? It basically advises to upgrade Ghostscript to version 9.05, I had the same issue and this fixed it.
Upgrade Ghostscript and Ghostscript X.11 and then do a “rccups restart” and that should fix your problem.
Unfortunately its not yet available from openSUSE updates yet.
It is available in the printing repository
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Printing/openSUSE_12.1
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PC: oS 12.1 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.3 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.1 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.8.3 | HD 3000
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