Printing Problem

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martin3
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Printing Problem

Post by martin3 »

We have some strange problem with certain PDF-file when we try to print them.

We get PDF files generated by a scanner (KONICA MINOLTA bizhub C652). These files are shown perfectly, but when we try to print them onto a Lexmark printer we get black bars in the output. When we change anything, printing is ok:
- another PDF-viewer -> ok
- another scanned PDF -> ok
- another printer -> ok

We recently updated to 2.5 (209.0) and haven't seen the problem before, i.e. either we haven't got those PDFs before or our update (I believe it was from 199 to 209) caused the problem.

I append a ZIP containing 3 PDFs for you to see the effect:
- Original.pdf - this is the original PDF. We sent it to our customer in order to print and scan with his Minolta scanner
- Scanned.pdf - this the scanned PDF we got from our customer
- Printed.pdf - this is the output as we get it if we print Scanned.pdf - each page has a black bar and the part left to the bar is squeezed.
Attachments
PDFPrintingProblem.zip
(195.21 KiB) Downloaded 140 times
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your e-mail. Indeed we've done some changes to the printing routines in our Viewer in the last few builds - mostly to resolve other problems, and we are aware that in some situations this results in the "black bars" when you print to specific devices. The solutions are to either click the "print as images" option in the Viewer, or download and print through the PDF-X Editor:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor
Where this problem is not present.

Best,
Stefan
martin3
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by martin3 »

Hi Stefan,

Do you plan to fix the problem. Our problem is that we have embedded PDF-XChange Viewer in our application via the SDK and about 1.500 people are working with our application the whole working day. So we cannot use PDF-XChange-Editor and I have to tell 1500 people how to print ;-)

Martin
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hi Martin,

I am not 100% sure this will be fixed/changed in the Viewer, but an Editor SDK should be available later this year.

Best,
Stefan
goldenmidas
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by goldenmidas »

Hi! I'm having the exact same issue here in our organization (we are printing to Canon Uniflow printer driver). We were using the build 210 (PDF XChange 4). Is this already fixed in build 211?


:evil:
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello goldenmidas,

You can download and try build 211, however my previous reply is still valid:
The solutions are to either click the "print as images" option in the Viewer, or download and print through the PDF-X Editor:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor
Where this problem is not present.
Regards,
Stefan
goldenmidas
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by goldenmidas »

Actually, the other solution was to print without "fit to paper" -option.

How does it print it wrong with fitting enabled?
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hi goldenmidas,

When "fit to paper" is enabled there is some scaling of the page.
Because the original page consists of several "stripes" of images and not a single large one - the floating point coordinates of all those objects do get rounded (with inevitable error) and the result is the black stripes you see.

Regards,
Stefan
goldenmidas
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by goldenmidas »

No, it isn't small stripes when rescaling the image, it's the same black area (about 6 cm wide through the A4 paper) as in the examples that martin3 provided.
Both ways the issue is gone, by selecting "Print as images" or without touching it and selecting "No scaling" instead "Fit to paper", the result looks good!

However, it isn't a good solution, PDF-XChange should print these documents better without "print as images" selected, Adobe Acrobat and other pdf readers can do that job... You have a perfect example here in martin3's zip file, investigate it and fix your program, there is a clear software bug that is causing it, understanding it's behaviour may give devs the idea how to fix it...
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Printing Problem

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hi goldenmidas,

Yes we do acknowledge the bug, and have fixed it in the Editor. Unfortunately it's not trivial to fix it in the Viewer as this will require quite a significant rewrite of the printing routine, and with the Editor almost ready to replace the Viewer now, I do not think that any other fix than "print as images" would be provided.

Regards,
Stefan
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