HP LaserJet 4 Plus sometimes fails to print with "v2013.111 Postscript" driver

Bug #313713 reported by Johannes Hessellund
18
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
cups (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Printing on HP laserjet 4 Plus sometimes fails.

It doesn't matter if connected to LPT1 or on network.

Using recommended Postscript driver.

Example printing http://www.domstol.dk/soenderborg/notarialforretninger/Pages/Tidspunkterfornotarialforretninger.aspx
Printer gives this error:

"ERROR: invalidfont
OFFENDING COMMAND: definefont

STACK:

/Font
-dictionary-
/KPSHBO+f-1-0"

According to https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/1999-February/018719.html its a PS level 1 vs. level 2 issue.

Revision history for this message
Johannes Hessellund (osos) wrote :

Another machine on the network is running Gutsy. Printing the same pdf which fails printing on Intrepid, prints without failure on Gutsy.

What has changed in the cups backend, that might be the cause for this failure?

Hope someone can/will help on this issue!

Revision history for this message
Matthew Lange (matthewlange) wrote :

Me too, on Karmic Koala 9.10 Testing, AMD64, CUPS 1.4.1, using the "HP LaserJet 4 Plus v2013.111 Postscript (recommended)" driver.

While printing from OpenOffice with output from GRAMPS, it will not print, and instead prints the following error:

-------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: invalidfont
OFFENDING COMMAND: definefont

STACK:

/Font
-dictionary-
/QKRTJM+TimesNewRomanPSMTFID73HGSet1
-------------------------------------------------------------

(What I think are) Relevant lines of .ps code:

-------------------------------------------------------------
FontName currentdict end definefont pop
%%EndResource
%%BeginResource: font TimesNewRomanPSMTFID73HGSet1
%!PS-TrueTypeFont-1.0-2.53740
%%Creator: SunTypeTools-TT 1.0 gelf
%- Font subset generated from a source font file: '/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/times.ttf'
%- Original font name: TimesNewRomanPSMT
%- Original font family: Times New Roman
%- Original font sub-family: Regular
11 dict begin
/FontName (TimesNewRomanPSMTFID73HGSet1) cvn def
/PaintType 0 def
/FontMatrix [1 0 0 1 0 0] def
/FontBBox [-568 -306 2028 1006] def
/FontType 42 def
/Encoding 256 array def
    0 1 255 {Encoding exch /.notdef put} for
Encoding 32 /glyph1 put
/XUID [103 0 1 16#2F10B8E9 2 16#0A698CDF 16#7AB73237] def
-------------------------------------------------------------

With the "HP Laserjet 4 Plus Foomatic/Postscript" driver, the document actually prints, though it is preceeded and followed by an invalidaccess error.

Changed in cups (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
summary: - HP laserjet fail to print - PS level 1 and 2 issue
+ HP LaserJet 4 Plus sometimes fails to print with "v2013.111 Postscript"
+ driver
Revision history for this message
Johannes Hessellund (osos) wrote :

Jaunty used ghostscript as a backend for a while. While using ghostscript backend printing worked.

Now they have changed back to poppler, and printing is no longer working using recommended driver.

I guess it is poppler not implementing font embedding in a proper ps 2 way.

Try printing documents with only one font (no bold italic or others). Those work for me. More than one font => fail.

Workaround:
Use foomatic ljet driver. It works, but is not as good as postscript driver! :(

Revision history for this message
Larry Siden (lsiden) wrote :

FWIW, I'm also using the HP Lasaerjet 4 Plus Foomatic/ljet4, and it works like a champ. I can put up with a slight decrease in quality if it works every time.

Revision history for this message
Filofel (filofel) wrote :

Since I upgraded to Karmic (release), neither the
HP LaserJet 4 Plus v2013.111 Postscript [en] (recommended)
nor the
HP LaserJet 4 Plus Foomatic/Postscript [en]
work for me.

Printing a vanilla .odt document (not even anything fancy) from Ooo 3.1, I get:

Using HP LaserJet 4 Plus v2013.111 Postscript [en] (recommended), I get nothing but:
ERROR: invalid font
OFFENDING COMMAND: definefont
STACK:
/Font
-dictionary-
/OpenSymbol__0

Using HP LaserJet 4 Plus Foomatic/Postscript [en], I get the first page, then instead of the second page:
ERROR: invalidaccess
OFFENDING COMMAND: writestring
STACK:
(PAGE: )
-filestream-
1
true

Same problem exporting to PDF then printing from the PDF viewer.
Sending the .pdf to a windows machine and printing the PDF from there does work, so the .pdf is valid.

I finally worked around the problem by switching to the
HP LaserJet4 Plus hpljs pcl3, 3.9.8 [en]

Revision history for this message
Larry Siden (lsiden) wrote :

FWIW, I switched to CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.4 driver. the jpijs pcl3 and Foomatic/ljet4 drivers produced output that was too faint, even when I replaced the toner cartridge.

Revision history for this message
Matthew Lange (matthewlange) wrote :

I got an error as well while printing using Arial Bold from OpenOffice 3.11 while using the "HP LaserJet 4 Plus Foomatic/Postscript" driver:

ERROR: invalidfont
OFFENDING COMMAND: definefont

STACK:

/Font
-dictionary-
/OJIXHX+Arial-BoldMTFID66HGSet2

For what it's worth, My LaserJet 4M+ seems to work on the "HP LaserJet 4 Plus pcl3, hpcups 3.9.8"

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