Bug 49230

Summary: print dialog has multiple deficiencies
Product: LibreOffice Reporter: John <bugs.jrg01>
Component: UIAssignee: Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED INVALID    
Severity: major CC: barta, caolan.mcnamara, dtardon
Priority: medium    
Version: 3.4.5 release   
Hardware: x86 (IA32)   
OS: Linux (All)   
Whiteboard:
Crash report or crash signature: Regression By:

Description John 2012-04-27 11:35:07 UTC 
There are numerous deficiencies in the print dialog.

I did a search in Bugzilla and found numerous bugs filed against print. I transitioned to LibreOffice when OpenOffice was taken over by Oracle. The print dialog has been troublesome in both. This begs a question. What good is a office suite if the printing is less than adequate? They go hand in hand. A great office suite requires that the ability to print be great as well.

1) Not all paper sizes available in the print driver are listed in the paper size dialog
2) paper sizes listed in Format -> Page -> Page - Paper format -> Format are available under the printing paper sizes.
3) Cannot change the media type under Print -> Properties -> Device -> Media Type
4) Because of #3, if a single sided media is in media type it cannot be changed to a two-sided type so duplexing options are not available under Two-Sided.
5) Slow drying paper cannot be set to any other value than the default for the printer.
6) Not all the trays are listed under paper source.

I am certain there are other issues, but these are the ones that come to the forefront as I write.

In order to be able to print two-sided in LibreOffice, I have had to select a two-sided letter as the default media in CUPS. Because of #1 and #3, no envelope sizes are available.

Often, in order to print something other than letter size, I have to export to PDF and then print in AdobeReader. Interestingly, the AdobeReader print dialog has all the printer options and paper sizes available.

Other print dialogs for program such as kate, firefox, thunderbird, kwrite, gimp,xtuple PostBooks, and every other print dialog I have recently tried worked just fine.

I really like LibreOffice and am grateful to the developers for what would be a great office suite if it did not have printing deficiencies.
Comment 1 John 2012-06-16 08:17:44 UTC 
That this is still an issue is sad.

I think it did improve slightly since a printer that is defined with two sided defaults in CUPS can now be set to single sided in the print dialog, but most of my printing is single sided. And the reverse is not true in LibreOffice; a printer with single sided defaults cannot be set to two sided. 

This may be in part that Brother, for some reason has two sided plain paper and single sided plain paper for media. Why Brother does this, I have no idea, and why two sided plain paper cannot be used for single sided printing is beyond me. But those are questions for a bug at Brother.

As a work around, I have had to put in two definitions in CUPS for each duplex printer; one for one sided default and one for 2 sided use. Certainly not the ideal solution.
Comment 2 Paul 2013-12-27 14:19:39 UTC 
Also just migrated from Open Office to Libre Office in order to use Mendeley reference manager and finding printing really problematic - seems mainly to do with paper sizes but I haven't done anything with charts, diagrams etc yet. The paper size menu that was in the print dialogue does not appear in the usual place but comes up under duplex printing with bizarre default page sizes which I have to reset for every publication
Comment 3 tommy27 2014-09-26 21:00:16 UTC 
please split this report into single separate bug reports.
marking this as INVALID