[Bug 332472]

[Adrian Johnson]

(In reply to comment #5)
> On Ubuntu 10.10, Firefox with this patch (and
> <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=502460>, of course) applied
> still passes PS instead of PDF to CUPS, so probably either CUPS or gtk2 on
> Ubuntu lies.

That's because the patch contains a gtk version check. gtk versions
older than 2.24 lie about the PDF print capability so we fallback to PS
in that case. This is probably a good thing as it ensures that if the
gtk is new enough to correctly report the PDF print capability, the
distro will also have recent versions of poppler and ghostscript that
have fixed the PDF printing bugs.

> Would it be better to offer a preference to override detection and
> enforce PDF?

Probably not. There is no immediate benefit to using PDF. This is more
about providing longer term benefits such as:

- Avoiding rasterization of transparency on printers that can print PDF
directly

- Avoid unnecessary conversion of PS to PDF then back to PS in cups

- As PDF is replacing PS as the standard printer language, most of my
cairo PS/PDF work will be focused on improving and optimizing the cairo
PDF output. The PS surface will only get bug fixes.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mozilla
Bugs, which is subscribed to mozilla-thunderbird in ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/332472

Title:
  Thunderbird cannot print to PDF