Hi,

Just spent a few days installing, configuring and troubleshooting. The TODO.txt file gets smaller and smaller, and right now, there's only one major bug left, but it's not only unnerving, it's a showstopper.

I'm running Slackware64 13.37 on the server, with a Brother HL-2030 laser printer attached to it. CUPS is configured OK and works well, but... landscape printing won't work with LibreOffice. (3.5.5 AlienBob packages).

Now I've read the ChangeLog.txt for current, and it seems like this problem has been solved by CUPS 1.4.8. I took a peek in patches/, but there's no trace of an update. So I'm seriously thinking about doing this small upgrade myself.

I've never built CUPS from source before, and I don't know if it's a big deal or not. But in any case, I'd better ask. As I figure out things, it would be a matter of taking the original SlackBuild, do a version bump and rebuild the thing. Or... are there any major pitfalls to expect, some things (like Samba for example) that suddenly will stop working mysteriously?

In case an upgrade is no big deal, which version would you recommened? I'd thought about CUPS 1.4.8 in replacement for 1.4.6, but maybe you have another suggestion?

I've already posted a message about this problem about a year ago, and we sort of found a tedious workaround. At the time, I thought LibreOffice was the culprit, and I only learned later the problem was related to CUPS. I'd be really glad to solve this problem. At the local school where I installed a complete Slackware network, we regularly hear folks swearing when they go to the printer and take a look at what they produced.

I generally do what you are contemplating. I've done it to upgrade, as well as downgrade software. I have an HP AIO L7590 that won't work with the new HPLIP for scanning. The one with 13.37 works just fine. So I run -current with a rebuilt HPLIP from 13.37.

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Slackware-current upgraded to CUPS 1.4.8 on 8-feb-2012 using the exact same unmodified cups.SlackBuild script you find in Slackware 13.37. The version bump was pretty minor so you should not find any issues upgrading to 1.4.8.
The only other package depending on cups, which was rebuilt (actually, upgraded) that same day was hplip. Perhaps you could rebuild the hplip package after you upgraded cups, but only if you experience printing issues.

Eric

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I never had printing issues with either version. Printing has always been excellent. Its just that scanning with the hplip upgrade was broken. Downgrading for whatever reason fixed that. Google was no help, at least it seems I was the only one having a problem. I just gave up trying to figure out what went south. The really goofy part is that I don't do that much scanning.

Thanks for the info!

I tried out what you suggested. CUPS 1.4.8 built without any hiccup. I had a hard time finding the "corresponding" version from HPLIP, since older versions have to be hunted down somewhere. I gave the latest (3.12.6) version a spin with the SlackBuild from 13.37, and it also built OK.

I upgraded both packages on the server and on another machine that's "hosting" a HP multifunction printer. I deleted both printers and added them again, to be on the safe side.

Good news: printing works well, mostly, as before.

Bad news: the LibreOffice landscape bug is still there.

So right now I'm busy writing SlackBuild scripts for openoffice.org and openoffice.org-langpack, which don't seem to be affected by this bug (and some other ones).

Looking at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43932 it appears that this landscape printing bug was fixed in LibreOffice finally? I checked the source for LO 3.5.5.3 (which is the version which I packaged) and indeed the patch http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoff...68e3ebbaca8c47 seems to have been applied there.
However, you still seem to have this landscape bug even with my LibreOffice 3.5.5 package?

I also found an old thread with a workaround, where you stated at that time that the workaround worked: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...6/#post4464414 but still you switched your customer to Debian. Are they back on Slack?

Perhaps I need to package 3.5.6 (which was released last week) or perhaps even 3.6.1 which was released today.

Eric

Yes, I have your 3.5.5 packages, Eric, with french and german localizations installed. BTW, I left a comment on your site because there seems to be some odd packaging detail. It's under the LibreOffice 3.5.5 article, probably you have overlooked it. The package mysteriously installs a whole libreoffice/ directory tree under /root/, which seems an odd place.

Back to the initial subject: yes, I still have the bug.

I think the best solution for me will be to make some packages for OpenOffice.org and translations. About a year ago, I decided to make a test, and I installed LibreOffice to some clients, and OpenOffice.org to some others. Quite some complaints from the LibreOffice users (besides the landscape bug, display oddities, paste special not working, various weirdnesses in the Impress module, ...), and no complaints whatsoever from the OpenOffice.org faction. It seems to me that - technically speaking - LibreOffice/OpenOffice are comparable to the Firefox/Seamonkey pair. The latter has a more conservative development cycle and seems to focus more on bugfixing.

Yeah, the past year was also under the sign of a big hesitation between Slackware and Debian. I was unable to decide, so I alternated between both and saw where it got me. I was seduced by many things with Debian (apt-cacher, packages galore, ...) but eventually I came to discover several downsides. Now I can say - for having used them both in production environments, on servers and desktops - that I know them quite well, I can live with both, but I much prefer Slackware (one hell of a factor being the great Slackware community). There's more work initially with Slackware, but it's well worth it. My Slackware installation in the local school was a lot (!) of work, but it's been heavily used for a year now, without any major dysfunction.

I packaged LibreOffice 3.6.0.4 with the slackbuild for 3.5.5. It`s working fine. Try to upgrade and see if the problem is still there.

Did you build it from source using my script or re-packaged the official binaries using the slackbuilds.org script/

Eric

I repackaged the RPMs with the SBo`s script.

Same problem here, using Slack 13.37 64bit, Alien's Libreoffice 3.5.5.3 and CUPS 1.4.6. I have a laser printer HP LJ P1005. Note: I use a linux printer driver foo2zjs.

OK, I just spent the best part of a sunny afternoon writing two SlackBuilds for Apache Open Office and the relevant language packs. It's a bit of a packaging nightmare, but I eventually got it right. I decided to go for the last available version, which is 3.4.0.

First try... huge disappointment. The landscape printing problem subsisted. I fiddled around a bit, and eventually got it right. Only thing one has to do is open the printer admin dialog and changing "PDF" to "Postscript level 1". Then everything works.

As far as I can see, one major difference between LibreOffice and OpenOffice is that these printer settings are 1) global for OpenOffice, meaning they're set once, and that's it, but 2) on a per-document basis in LibreOffice, which makes the thing a PITA to work with.

While googling for this particular problem, I found many (!) people in a similar situation. One can't help the feeling that the printing system in Linux is in a similarly chaotic state as, say, the sound system.

But once this problem is resolved, Apache Open Office is quite snappy, crisp and clean. I've hunted down some known bugs from LibreOffice, and everything works fine here.

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When I tried to print landscape from Libreoffice (3.5.6 on 13.37), it didn't work same as for you, but I also got the following two error messages:
Did you get these two error messages too?

The "gs[23126]" seemed to indicate a segfault in ghostscript. So I decided to upgrade cups and ghostscript and ... voilá ... it works now. I can print landscape from Libreoffice 3.5.6 (Alien Bob's packages) on 13.37 now using the default settings.

I upgraded cups to 1.4.8 (not sure if this is needed, but I felt like doing it). And I upgraded ghostscript to 9.06 using the build script from current.

Hope this fixes the problem for you too.

I tried what you suggested, but unfortunately the problem still subsists. At least, the workaround is now less painful for the users.