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[Bug 1476705] Re: postscript printer hideously slow in some cases (pdftops)

 

In summary: 
=========
The sample pdf file of this bug prints well if pdftops is replaced by pdftocairo. I still find that printing is slow for my Linux Mint test page. Passing the LanguageLevel to "2" in PPD seems finally to be worse, at least for this test page. Maybe I underestimate the complexity of this test page, but it prints quickly with a generic PCL6 Guntenprint PPD.

Time will tell if pdftocairo is an "acceptable" fix, since I have no
official PCL6 alternative (for this printer).

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1476705

Title:
  postscript printer hideously slow in some cases (pdftops)

Status in poppler package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in system-config-printer package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  With my (old) postscript printer, print a single page can take many
  minutes on some situations. It happens with some PDF files (not all)
  and Firefox printing of Google map, for example. When this happens, I
  observed in system monitor that pdftops is running continuously. After
  some manual PDF -> PS conversions, I see that pdftops inflates the
  file size for problematic cases, but is ok for other files (size
  similar to the original file, or even smaller). I don't know if modern
  Postscript printers can handle this quickly, but it's unacceptable
  here and certainly not an efficient way to print those files.

  So I suspect that pdftops should be fixed.

  For example, I join a problematic pdf produced by Google Map in
  Firefox. I tried many conversions. As you can see, I get a much larger
  file (36 times) with pdftops. It is worse with pdf2ps (and it takes
  longer to process), so replace pdftops by pdf2ps is not an option for
  me. However, pdftocairo quickly produces an efficient file. I have the
  same success if I open the PDF file with Evince and print it as a
  Postscript file. I get a similar file if I print to PS directly from
  Google Map (Firefox). Of course these small PS files produced by
  pdftocairo, Evince of Firefox print flawlessly on my printer.

  See also Bug # 1095498 which I suspect is the same (old) thing, but I fill a new one since it doesn't seem to be printer specific.
  Of course, another workaround could be to use a PCL driver but no one is available for my printer (HP Color Laserjet 2605dn).

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