[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#523269: More info

Tomas Janousek tomi at nomi.cz
Wed Jun 10 17:01:19 UTC 2009


Hello,

I think that this is caused by the switch to using PDF as primary format for
printing -- CUPS converts the PostScript input to PDF and then back to
PostScript just to feed it to cups-pdf which then produces the final PDF. The
problem is the PDF->PostScript step, which is done by ps2pdf which cripples
fonts.

From what I understood from changelogs, ps2pdf (Ghostscript) is used instead
of pstopdf (poppler) just because of the paper size handling. The font
crippling is much more important issue though, so I suggest that change be
reverted. On the other hand, I don't really see a reason to go to PDF if input
and output (printer) formats are both PostScript.

Luckily, there's an easy workaround:
    echo "application/postscript  application/vnd.cups-postscript 50      pstops" >/etc/cups/pstops.convs
    invoke-rc.d cups reload

This workaround makes the cost of using pstops filter lower than the cost of
the pstopdf|pdftopdf|cpdftops chain and restores the old behvaiour. I tested
this with printing from Evince as well -- it produces PostScript output, so
pstops filter is used and the output goes directly to cups-pdf, keeping font
embedding untouched.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
-- 
Tomáš Janoušek, a.k.a. Liskni_si, http://work.lisk.in/





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