Bug 2705 - Consider skipping pdftops on platforms which can print PDFs directly
Summary: Consider skipping pdftops on platforms which can print PDFs directly
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: ThinLinc
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Printing (show other bugs)
Version: 2.0.0
Hardware: PC Unknown
: P2 Normal
Target Milestone: 4.19.0
Assignee: Pierre Ossman
URL:
Keywords: adaha_tester, relnotes
: 5347 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2008-02-20 09:16 CET by Peter Åstrand
Modified: 2025-05-19 12:11 CEST (History)
2 users (show)

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Acceptance Criteria:

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Description Peter Åstrand cendio 2008-02-20 09:16:16 CET 
Many modern Linuxes can print PDFs directly, for example, via the "lpr" command. In this case, running pdftops is unneccessary and might even lose information. It would be better to print the PDF directly. We would need some way of determining if the printing system accepts PDFs or not.
Comment 1 Peter Åstrand cendio 2008-02-20 09:24:31 CET 
According to http://www.cups.org/articles.php?L249+TFAQ+P1+Q, all CUPS systems should be able to handle PDFs:

>Yes! CUPS translates your file into information that your printer will >understand.
>
>By default CUPS takes your current media size you have assigned and centers each >page of the PDF to that. 

So perhaps all we need to do is to determine if the queue is a CUPS queue or not.
Comment 2 Peter Åstrand cendio 2008-02-26 14:11:28 CET 
Advantages of printing the PDF directly:

* Support for things that PS cannot handle, such as transparency. 

* Faster print time. For example, thin terminals might take a very long time to convert PDF to PS. The conversion might even run out of RAM. During the conversion, tlclient is blocked. 

* Reliability. The fewer conversion steps, the better. For example, fonts are problematic.
Comment 3 Pierre Ossman cendio 2025-05-13 17:21:05 CEST 
*** Bug 5347 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Pierre Ossman cendio 2025-05-13 17:21:55 CEST 
CUPS has supported PDF natively for over a decade now. I think we can assume PDF support without any fallback now.
Comment 8 Pierre Ossman cendio 2025-05-14 10:59:46 CEST 
All done. I couldn't really see any differences in printing, but we ship less things and do fewer conversion steps, so I'd still say it's a win.

Added release notes as this replaces the effect from bug 8576, and could be useful information for sysadmins in case of issues.
Comment 9 Adam Halim cendio 2025-05-19 11:28:10 CEST 
Tested printing as part of bug 8584, did not see any issues.

Commits look good.
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