GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 442746
[WIN32] printing only black boxes
Last modified: 2013-08-06 04:02:27 UTC
when previewing or printing i see black boxes where there would be text, see attachment
Created attachment 89140 [details] screenshot of print preview actually printing puts the same thing as the bad preview on paper, this is on a xerox phaser 7300 printer (via network)
Which version of Gnumeric are you running?
1.7.10 (the win32 version)
1.7.10 uses GtkPrint. According to your pictures it appears that cairo/pango doesn't rendered the characters correctly. So I am reclassifying this as a GtkPrint bug. Does this also happen for other fonts, all fonts?
well, print preview worked a couple of times for a small test file (tried 2 different fonts) then I opened the file in the screenshot above, then the problem re-appeared and persisted in new files and for all the fonts I tried. the file was originally .XLS then saved as .gnumeric I will attach it for reference.
Created attachment 89155 [details] the file pictured in the previous screen shot XLS saved as gnumeric
Hmm, works just fine for me under Linux.
> Hmm, works just fine for me under Linux. ... and the relevance of that observation for this win32-specific problem is what?
"... and the relevance of that observation for this win32-specific problem is what?" How do you know that it is in fact a win32-specific problem unless you try different OSs? And since I wrote the gnumeric printing code, it is quite important for me to know that it really seems to be a windows specific gtk bug.
*** Bug 447151 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
444942 cross references this report, and the two are in appearance the same problem. I am no programmer, but this does indicate that this problem, which is fatal in gnumeric 1.7.10-win32-1.exe is common to more than one brand of printer, Xerox (this report) and HP (444942). Mine is HP Deskjet 842C
this also happens on xerox workcentre pro c2636
I've faced similar issues with cairo (tested with version 1.2 and 1.4), it was related to two differents cairo bugs : 1. The freetype backend of cairo gives "black bloxes" on windows see the following bug "freetype backend with win32 backend display "black boxes"" https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10557 2. Printing a transparent rectangle over text also gives black boxes. See issues with cairo win32 printing on cairo mailing list: "Printing a transparent rectangle over some text results in an opaque rectangle without any of the text under the rectangle visible." http://lists.cairographics.org/archives/cairo/2007-June/010806.html Both bugs are still not fixed. I don't know which bug is related to gnumeric. It may be using the freetype backend instead of the win32 font backend or it may print some invisible rectangle around text.
I'd like to update my last comment (#12) about Cairo. Both bugs are corrected using the development branch of cairo (version 1.5.4). You _must_ use the new "Win32 printing surface". Still, the "win32 printing surface" is quiet new (I'm experiencing some weird bugs), I don't know if it's going to be included with cairo 1.6.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444942#c15 suggests that using the Win32 printing surface isn't sufficient to fix this problem.
We have support for cairo_win32_printing_surface in gtk+ trunk now. I think that will fix the printing part of this bug, but not necessarily the preview.
Vista premium SP1 Canon IP4500 Gniumeric 1.7.2 windows Rectangular black boxes printing instead of text
Previews and prints fine now in gnumeric 1.10.16. Thanks for fixing it.