Printing Firefox to postscript printer SOLVED

Tommy Trussell tommy.trussell at gmail.com
Wed Aug 24 13:26:05 UTC 2005


On 8/23/05, Franko30 <ulist at gs1.ubuntuforums.org> wrote:
> I'd really appreciate anyone helping on this as the command given above
> gives me just garbage in my PDF file, here it is:
> 
> 
> 
> > Error: /invalidfont in findfont
> > Operand stack:
> > F2 Times-BoldItalic Font Times-BoldItalic 344586 Times-BoldItali
> > Execution stack:
> > %interp_exit .runexec2 --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringv
> > Dictionary stack:
> > --dict:1055/1417(ro)(G)-- --dict:0/20(G)-- --dict:73/200(L)-- --dict
> > Current allocation mode is local
> > Last OS error: 2
> > %!PS-Adobe-3.0
> > %%Pages: (atend)
> > %%BoundingBox: 0 0 0 0
> > %%HiResBoundingBox: 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
> > %%Creator: ESP Ghostscript 707 (pswrite)
> > %%CreationDate: 2005/08/23 21:09:06
> > %%DocumentData: Clean7Bit
> > %%LanguageLevel: 2
> > %%EndComments
> > %%BeginProlog

... (snip)

> > %%EndProlog
> > %%Trailer
> > %%Pages: 0
> > %%EOF


The text you included here (that I excerpted) is PostScript, not
PDF... and as it says in the Prolog, the boundingbox is zero and the
number of pages is zero. You wouldn't expect that to print anything,
so there is something else going on here. You didn't say exactly what
command you used... Did you put the following in your Print Command
field in Firefox:

gs -q -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=- -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH
-dMozConvertedToLevel2=true - | lpr
${MOZ_PRINTER_NAME:+'-P'}${MOZ_PRINTER_NAME}


(All of the text above goes on one line, and some of the spaces are
critical. I excerpted this command from the PostScript file produced
by Firefox.)

This command solved the problem to my satisfaction, though I will say
that others have been dissatisfied with the same solution (the concern
expressed was for the quality of the rendering, though my rendering
has been completely acceptable).

The exact problem I had was that Firefox produces a version of "Level
2" PostScript that my older printer cannot handle, and it fails on the
font definition.

I'm not sure how you ended up with the file you did. Did you create a
.ps file and try to use something like ps2pdf to convert it?

> Doesn't it bother more people that they can't print with Firefox?

I gather most people aren't having this problem. Maybe it only affects
people trying to work with PostScript. My printer uses PostScript
"natively", and maybe you are trying to create pdf files from the
PostScript.I have NOT had trouble printing files to a CUPS server with
an inkjet printer on it.The underlying transmission is in PostScript
but CUPS handles that fine.




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