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

 

@cliddell Wow, thank you for all these informations.

As I said before, my first sample (gmap.pdf) prints quickly now with
pdftocairo. For this document, it seems that few extra processing is
done.

However, the second sample (see appout of my printer test page, also
created by Cairo) was still slow to print, even with pdftocairo (with
much extra processing, as you describe). If I choose (as you suggested)
600 dpi instead ProRes 1200, this sheet is printed in less than a
minute. It's not "quick" but acceptable now for my home need. I see some
differences on the intensity of the logo and dashed lines, but overall
the quality appears to be good enough.

So I now set this printer in 600 dpi by default.

I continue to observe that pdftocairo is quicker (big difference for
gmap.pdf), so I conserve this setting also. Is there any drawback to
this? If not, why not set pdftocairo as the default renderer, for
postscript printers?

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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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