page orientation vs. various apps vs. printer(s)

SaintDanBert · 02-06-2018, 11:40 AM

I've read the thread Set Default Page Orientation. It is quite dated (2015) but I have some similar troubles in 2018.

Printing from a browser gives me the most grief the most often. Many web-pages seem to print well as portrait. Some, however, require landscape. Sadly, some web-pages are too wide part way through their content and it does not wrap. The content is then truncated and "lost."

I want all of my print requests, regardless of the source application, to sort out the per-document and per-page orietation -- portrait vs. landscape -- and have the printer do the right things. Okular and Evince seem to behave well for many PDF files. However, apps such as browsers (Firefox, Chromium) and email (Thunderbird) appear to want a single page orientation for every page of every print request.

Do I understand that modern linux workstations make everything into a "PDF data" before asking CUPS to send bytes to a printer? Does the app tag the "PDF data" so CUPS knows where it came from or does it simply grab a file from the spool queue?

Folks, I really, REALLY want to understand this but I'd like a two-phase solution. First, tell me something that works. Second, point me at sources for deeper understanding.

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Mill J · 02-06-2018, 12:54 PM

I'd try setting defaults via localhost:631 from a web browser.

But if you really want to figure things out this is what you want https://www.cups.org/documentation.html

teckk · 02-06-2018, 01:27 PM

Quote:

Folks, I really, REALLY want to understand this but I'd like a two-phase solution.

Quote:

Okular and Evince seem to behave well for many PDF files.

You mean to make a pdf from a web page, then print it.

Make the .pdf from web page the way you want it. Make something that allows you to select page size, font size etc.
For example Qt version:

Code:

#! /usr/bin/env python

#Run web2pdf.py then answer input prompts

import sys, signal
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication
from PyQt5.QtCore import QUrl, QSizeF
from PyQt5.QtWebKitWidgets import QWebView, QWebPage
from PyQt5.QtWebKit import QWebSettings 
from PyQt5.QtPrintSupport import QPrinter

#Change user agent here
uagent = ('Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0')

class WebToPdf(QWebView):
    def __init__(self, url, out_file, font_size, options):
        QWebView.__init__(self)
        
        #Set user agent for web page request
        def agent(self):
            return (uagent)
        userAgent = QWebPage(self)
        userAgent.userAgentForUrl = agent
        
        web = QWebView()
        web.setPage(userAgent)
        
        #Set from options dialog
        if 'N' in options:
            web.settings().setAttribute(
                    QWebSettings.JavascriptEnabled, False)
            web.settings().setAttribute(
                    QWebSettings.AutoLoadImages, False)
        if 'I' in options:
            web.settings().setAttribute(
                    QWebSettings.JavascriptEnabled, False)
        if 'S' in options:
            web.settings().setAttribute(
                    QWebSettings.AutoLoadImages, False)
        if 'C' or '' in options:
            pass

        #Set from font_size input    
        web.settings().globalSettings().setFontSize(
                    QWebSettings.MinimumFontSize, int(font_size))
                    
        web.load(QUrl(url))
        
        #pdf printer
        printer = QPrinter()
        
        #Set pdf page size
        #Letter 216 × 279|Legal 216 × 356|Tabloid 279 × 432|Ledger 432 × 279
        printer.setPaperSize(QSizeF(216, 279), QPrinter.Millimeter) #Letter
        #printer.setPaperSize(QSizeF(216, 356), QPrinter.Millimeter) #Legal
        #printer.setPaperSize(QSizeF(279, 432), QPrinter.Millimeter) #Tabloid
        #printer.setPaperSize(QSizeF(432, 279), QPrinter.Millimeter) #Ledger
        
        printer.setOutputFormat(QPrinter.PdfFormat)
        #Set pdf margins
        printer.setPageMargins(10,10,10,10,QPrinter.Millimeter)
        printer.setOutputFileName(out_file)

        def print_it():
            web.print_(printer)
            QApplication.exit()
    
        web.loadFinished.connect(print_it)
        
        #Keep a log file
        with open('web2pdf_log', 'a') as f:
            f.write('\nurl: %s\nFile name: %s\nFont size: %s'
                    '\nOption used: %s\nUser agent: %s\n' 
                    % (url, out_file, font_size, options, uagent))

def main():
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    
    #Get inputs
    #Get url or quit
    url = input('\n' 'Source url can be web page or file://myfile.html'
                '\n' 'Enter/Paste source url: ')
    if url == '':
        print ('Error: Need to enter a url')
        sys.exit(0)
        
    #Get out file name or set default name
    out_file = input('\n' 'Enter output file name (default: out.pdf): ')
    if out_file == '':
        out_file = 'out.pdf'
        
    #Get font size or set default size
    font_size = input('\n' 'Enter font size for web page (default: 16): ')
    if font_size == '':
        font_size = '16'
    if font_size.isdigit():
        pass
    else:
        print ('Error: Font size has to be an integer')
        sys.exit(0)

    #Choose options dialog, select type or set default type
    options = input('\n''Select pdf type: \n\n'
                        'No images or scripts N \n'
                        'Images - No scritps  I \n'
                        'Scripts - No images  S \n'
                        'Complete page        C \n'
                        'default: C \n\n'
                        'Enter one of N I S C: ')
    #Change all chars entered to upper case
    options_fix_case = options.upper()
    if options_fix_case not in ['N', 'I', 'S', 'C', '']:
        print ('Error: Invalid option entered')
        sys.exit(0)

    print_pdf = WebToPdf(url, out_file, font_size, options_fix_case)
    print_pdf
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Or an Example gtk version

Code:

#! /usr/bin/env bash

#webpage to pdf with wkhtmltopdf

clear
#Get inputs
read -p "Enter/Paste page url: " url
read -p "Enter output filename, default (out.pdf): " pdffile
read -p "Enter minimum font size, default (20): " fontsize

#If no font size entered or non integer set default
if ! [ "${fontsize//[0-9]}" ]; then
    fontsize=20 #Default font size
fi

#If no out filename entered set default
if [ -z "$pdffile" ]; then 
    pdffile="out.pdf"
fi

#Select pdf type
read -p "
Lower quality/save space L 
No script/no images N
With images/no script I
With scripts/no images S
Full images/scripts/background F
 
Enter L N I S F : " lnif

#Keep a log file
echo "
"$(date)"
URL: "$url"
Outfile name: "$pdffile"
Fontsize: "$fontsize"
Quality: "$lnif"
" 2>&1 | tee -a webtopdf_log

#Get it
case $lnif in
	[Ll]* ) wkhtmltopdf -l -T 6 -B 6 -R 3 -L 3 --no-background \
    --no-images --disable-javascript --disable-plugins \
    --minimum-font-size "$fontsize" "$url" "$pdffile"
	;;
	
	[Nn]* ) wkhtmltopdf -T 6 -B 6 -R 3 -L 3 --no-background \
    --no-images --disable-javascript --disable-plugins \
    --minimum-font-size "$fontsize" "$url" "$pdffile"
	;;
    
    [Ii]* ) wkhtmltopdf -T 6 -B 6 -R 3 -L 3 --no-background \
    --disable-javascript --disable-plugins \
    --minimum-font-size "$fontsize" "$url" "$pdffile"
    ;; 
    
    [Ss]* ) wkhtmltopdf -T 6 -B 6 -R 3 -L 3 --no-background \
    --no-images --disable-plugins --minimum-font-size "$fontsize" \
    "$url" "$pdffile"
    ;;
	
	[Ff]* ) wkhtmltopdf -T 6 -B 6 -R 3 -L 3 --javascript-delay 10000 \
    --no-stop-slow-scripts --minimum-font-size "$fontsize" \
    "$url" "$pdffile"
	;;
	
	*) echo "Invalid option"
	;;
esac

Then print the .pdf
Edit: I'm sorry wkhtmltopdf is qt5 now also.

Code:

pacman -Si wkhtmltopdf
Repository      : community
Name            : wkhtmltopdf
Version         : 0.12.4-1
Description     : Command line tools to render HTML into PDF and various image
                  formats
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://wkhtmltopdf.org/
Licenses        : LGPL3
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : qt5-webkit  qt5-svg
Optional Deps   : xorg-server: wkhtmltopdf needs X or Xvfb to operate
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Download Size   : 162.42 KiB
Installed Size  : 685.00 KiB

SaintDanBert · 02-12-2018, 07:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by teckk

You mean to make a pdf from a web page, then print it.

WOW! Thanks for all of that.
I have and will learn a lot from your code on several fronts.

I'm not sure that it "solves" my original problem. Given that I have a browser open to some page that I want to print, the browser has some menu item or keystroke (eg, CTRL-P) that enables PRINT_THIS_PAGE. It is at this point that I'm seeking to intervene and assert control over what gets printed.

I know that I can select PRINT_TO_FILE and make a PDF document from the web page. I can then use your scripts and others to tinker both the output and the printer settings that get used. It sounds like I want my own variant, PRINT_TO_FILE_MyWAY. Alternately, I need to automatically notice that I've created a new PDF document in some folder and launch a chain of scripts to tinker then print that file.

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

sundialsvcs · 02-12-2018, 08:25 AM

Actually, the CUPS user manual is probably more thorough than their "help."

For instance, here ...

michaelk · 02-12-2018, 10:30 AM

I have the same problem that some websites automatically print as landscape which are really portrait and some print as portrait but then some content is truncated.

Your correct that the default format was changed from Postscript to PDF. You can create your own cups filters to automatically check the PDF but if the content is already truncated before cups and then just printing as landscape will not help much.

AwesomeMachine · 02-12-2018, 01:11 PM

I have my browser set to 'preview' before it prints. From there I can check the format and switch between orientations. I also usually don't want every individual printed page of a web page, so I specify only the pages I want printed.

teckk · 02-12-2018, 03:40 PM

@SaintDanBert

Quote:

I know that I can select PRINT_TO_FILE and make a PDF document from the web page. I can then use your scripts and others to tinker both the output and the printer settings that get used.

No,
Copy the url from the browser and paste it into your pdf making script. The above scripts make a pdf from a url, no cups, no BS. Then after you have a .pdf made from the page, do what you want with it, print it, keep it, delete it...etc.

Unremark the paper size that you want. Or have the script ask you for it.

Code:

#Set pdf page size
#Letter 216 × 279|Legal 216 × 356|Tabloid 279 × 432|Ledger 432 × 279
printer.setPaperSize(QSizeF(216, 279), QPrinter.Millimeter) #Letter
#printer.setPaperSize(QSizeF(216, 356), QPrinter.Millimeter) #Legal
#printer.setPaperSize(QSizeF(279, 432), QPrinter.Millimeter) #Tabloid
#printer.setPaperSize(QSizeF(432, 279), QPrinter.Millimeter) #Ledger

From man wkhtmltopdf

Code:

   -B, --margin-bottom <unitreal>
              Set the page bottom margin
       -L, --margin-left <unitreal>
              Set the page left margin
       -R, --margin-right <unitreal>
              Set the page right margin
       -T, --margin-top <unitreal>
              Set the page top margin
       -O, --orientation <orientation>
              Set orientation to Landscape or Portrait
           --page-height <unitreal>
              Page height
       -s, --page-size <Size>
              Set paper size to: A4, Letter, etc.
           --page-width <unitreal>

It gives you the ability to inspect the pdf before you print it. Or make the pdf 3 or 4 times until you get it right. You can also dload the page to file once, then use the script or wkhtmltopdf on the file. You have to download it anyway to make a pdf from it, regardless how you get it. Make a script like above and you can get a page real quick with/without images, with/without scripts. My 2 cents.

SaintDanBert · 02-14-2018, 03:56 PM

Thanks, heaps...

I'll give it a try and report back.

Regards,
~~~ 0;-Dan