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NeoOffice :: View topic - Cannot Print in 1.1
Cannot Print in 1.1
 
   NeoOffice Forum Index -> OpenOffice.org X11 Testing
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robob
Guest





PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2003 12:08 pm    Post subject: Cannot Print in 1.1

Hello,

I have 1.1 (no build number listed in help about) on a Dual G5 2ghz with preinstalled Panther. I cannot print from OO even when selecting the printer.

Printer is HP6L via TCP/IP cups on a Win2k server. Works in 1.03 on my G4.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Robert A. Ober
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OPENSTEP
The One
The One


Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA

PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2003 11:27 pm    Post subject:

Did you install 1.0.3 GM prior to 1.1, or is 1.1 your first installation?

If you've never installed 1.0.3 GM, I'd recommend running through the 1.0.3 GM installer. It will install all of the additional supporting programs and libraries required by OOo in addition to OOo proper. These include:

* XFree86 (not installed if Apple X11 is present)
* a window manager (not installed if Apple X11 is present)
* up to date version of freetype (only for older XF86 installs)
* dlcompat library
* fondu (used for font conversions)
* ESP ghostscript (used for printing)

If you're missing any of those programs or if you installed them via fink they won't be found...and if ghostcript isn't there printing will be completely hosed (fink puts them under /sw instead of their regular /usr style paths...thus although a good idea fink is evil and shoudl be destroyed for using paths not compatible with applications that weren't installed by fink). Running the 1.0.3 GM installer will put the required stuff on your box. You can simply delete the OpenOffice.org1.0.3 directory after installation if you only intend on using the prerelease versions of 1.1..

ed
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Guest






PostPosted: Wed Dec 10, 2003 8:09 am    Post subject:

OPENSTEP wrote:
Did you install 1.0.3 GM prior to 1.1, or is 1.1 your first installation?

[...]

If you're missing any of those programs or if you installed them via fink they won't be found...and if ghostcript isn't there printing will be completely hosed (fink puts them under /sw instead of their regular /usr style paths...thus although a good idea fink is evil and shoudl be destroyed for using paths not compatible with applications that weren't installed by fink).
ed


ed, Fink has been out there for a while and there are already sources that come with a "--with-fink" configure option (I think one is AbiWord).
I wouldn't classify fink as "evil"...Smile

Ok, I don't intend to criticize, just a suggestion.

On the other side, I have Fink and a fully functional 1.0.3 OOo version installed (I don't think it's the GM, but a previous version, with severals patches applied). I am now using the 1.1 build found on mirrors.
I find it very usable and overall better than 1.0 (I do mainly word processing and spreadheeting, but also some drawing of charts).
The main problem I have is with fonts: for printing, I use to export as PDF (I found CUPS Lexmark driver too limited, so I prefer printing from Aqua); I find that I can only use a few of the fonts available to OOo 1.1. Example: if I use Helvetica, everything goes fine. If I use Arial, the fonts simply don't show up in the exported PDF.
What could be the point in this?
I have already tried importing fonts converted with fondu, but with no results.
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Guest
Guest





PostPosted: Tue Jan 13, 2004 8:55 pm    Post subject: Cannot print in 1.1

I find that many of the fonts are displayed oddly in 1.1 (i.e. Helvetica, for one example). PDF'ing is another a real problem as Arial doesn't seem to work at all. You just get a blank. Other fonts give the same results. Printing is hit and miss with fonts like Helvitica being translated to something that looks a lot like Times Roman.

I have a new Mac with OX X 10.3.2 on it. I'm using the Apple X.11 version 1.0 - XFree86 4.3.0. I installed the distribution OpenOffice 1.03 and then installed the 1.1 over top as per instructions. The version of OpenOffice 1.1 says it was produced by "dario" but has no other version number.

Any ideas of what to do? Do I have a invalid 1.1 build? Is this a known problem? Is there any way around it? I just converted over from Microsoft and OpenOffice is an important tool in the office so I want to be able to show that the Mac was a good decision.
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fa
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: May 27, 2003
Posts: 88

PostPosted: Thu Jan 15, 2004 8:09 pm    Post subject:

When was the version of OOo you downloaded built? I forgot when I dropped the printing code in, it was in December. Can you open the Console.app, and see if OpenOffice prints anything to the console? You can also do this:

1) Open Terminal.app
2) Find out where you OOo is installed (usually /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.3 or /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.1)
3) Type '<where your OOo is>/program/swriter'
4) Try to print something
5) Copy all the output in Terminal.app and post it here

Dan
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pongo000
Blue Pill


Joined: Jan 25, 2004
Posts: 3

PostPosted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 3:00 am    Post subject:

Printing from OOo_1.1.0_031006 does appear to be somewhat hosed under Panther. I'm running a stock Panther install along with gimp-print (for a Canon printer). OO appears to be wanting to convert from ps to PDF ("ps2pdf: File or directory not found"), so I installed EPSGhostscript since the ps2pdf utility wasn't installed (funny that, I though Ghostscript was installed with 10.3). Fixed this problem, but now if I try to print from OO, I get a "<filename>: File or directory not found" where <filename> is the name of the file being printed. I've spent several hours on this today, and feel like I'm going in circles.
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OPENSTEP
The One
The One


Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA

PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 11:38 pm    Post subject:

Hmm...a few things to note:

Panther installs don't include ghostscript, but rather do include their own set of gimp-print drivers and their own postscript rip. The Panther RIP is named "pstopdf", just ever so slightly differently named then the ghostscript "ps2pdf" and utterly different as far as OOo is concerned. Fire up a terminal and do an "ls /usr/local/bin" and if ps2pdf isn't there, ghostscript needs to be reinstalled from the ESP dimage before OOo can print Smile


<start FINK RANT>

As to the "fink isn't evil"...well, no, fink isn't evil, provided your software has been *compiled* by fink. Fink-compiled software sets all of its paths to "/sw" (or whatever fink wants...and of course, this choice of root path is dependent on fink and not the software being compiled).

Basically, if software was compiled by fink itself it's fine.

If it was compiled on a system without fink, then it's screwed. It needs to look in both the standard "/usr/local" style paths as well as whatever paths fink has hardcoded for its own install paths which you can't discover until fink itself decides to compile your software.

Regardless of whether it was compiled with fink or without fink, if software is placed into a situation where some of its dependencies were compiled with fink and some without fink then it requires each program to be clever enough to search both "/usr/local" and an unknown path that may be "/sw" (or may not be "/sw" depending on wherever fink may decide to relocate everything into).

The Mac OS X linker only allows you to link against a library at a single path, either absolute or relative to your executable. But dylibs (e.g. libdl) may have been deposited either in their standard location or in a fink "standard" location depending on whether the *user* decided to install something via fink or a standard OS X/Unix style install procedure. The linker can't deal easily with the same dylib in multiple locations.

So...is fink evil?

From a user's perspective it seems like the perfect answer to adopting open source software on a Mac...just type a simple command in the Terminal and get access to lots of great Unix software.

As a developer...it is truly evil. Fink only works well with other things that were installed and compiled by/with fink. The utilities provided by the OS don't allow for an easy mixture of fink/non-fink, so you need to code for both. And if you're working on a program with 7 to 10 additional dependencies...and God knows what other dependencies...you do the permutations on how many different installations may be possible with that many programs. It's a developer's nightmare, espeically if those dependent programs don't have the ability to use both fink and non-fink installations, which none of them do. In short...

fink is evil. To be compatible with fink installed and non-fink installed software would require dozens of different library paths and other variables for simply launching OOo, if not hundreds.

If OOo X11 winds up needing a specific program and it was already installed by fink, hopefully it'll either go ahead and install a duplicate copy of that required program in the normal install location when installing OOo or, in the case of a braindead X11 based installer, just fail when trying to execute those operations (e.g. printing).

If fink had been reasonable from the get-go and put things it installed into standard locations like apt-get or RedHat's RPM then life would be good. But fink fucked it all up and is too far along for taking a huge step backwards in software installation.

Unix sysadmins who consciously decide to place software in non-standard install locations do so for a reason, whether it be for restricting access to a specific group or whatever...and they either assume users can deal with the environment variable wizadry to cope or will do it for their users.

Fink decides to place things in non-standard locations by default. And it's intended for users who know nothing about the Terminal and have probably never heard about an evironment variable...and know nothing about how to properly relocate Unix software into a custom directory.

So what does the end-user do? Blame the final piece of software they're trying to install, not blaming Fink for silently leading them into a world of hurt from the get go.

Thus fink is evil, and I recommend any OS X user of a ported X11 application *never* use fink, whether it be Gimp, AbiWord, Gnumeric, OOo, oor otherwise. Fink will either shoot you in the foot unintentionally or will eventually result in you double-installing software should you ever choose to install X11 apps outside of fink.

<end FINK RANT>

ed <--- hopefully has reached fink ranting closure at long last
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Guest






PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 11:44 am    Post subject:

I feel your pain. I am also not a big fink fan, though I do see that it can help folks that dislike/distrust of their CLI skillz.

I have found that I can print to LPR devices just fine, but local USB printers do not respond to the resultant queued OS X print job.

My USB color printer just stares at me blankly, where OOo 1.0.3 printed/prints the same file just fine.

hmmm.
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