Default page size for printing is letter

changed title from:

  Default printer settings set to US Letter and inches

to:

  Printer settings should default to appropiate values for the user

So what works these days?

  /etc/papersize

  LC_PAPER

  nl_langinfo(PAPER_HEIGHT) / nl_langinfo(PAPER_WIDTH)

  others?

assign to katakai-san.
please have a look. Thanks

what's the status of this?

I've started working on this.

This issue also affect Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (tested on Ubuntu 6.10).

This bug seems to be the same as https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=144625 .

Will be marking that one as duplicate.

Masaki, are you still working on this?

Masaki, can you provide any feedback on this ? A month has gone by. Thank you.

I'm very sorry for the late response. I will not be able to work on this area. Anyone can take this?

*** Bug 144625 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Since Masaki can't work on this, shouldn't the bug be marked as NEW then?

This bug is really annoying. Is anyone interested in solving it? Is there a usual way to support (financially) someone?

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; es-ES; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071205 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Build Identifier:

Seems that Firefox/Seamonkey printing dialog doesn't take care of /etc/papersize setting and always defaults to letter instead of "a4" (/etc/papersize is provided by libpaper)

Thanks a lot for fixing this

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

*** Bug 430064 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

confirming based on the dupe

Mandriva's 2008.1 firefox 2.0.0.13 doesn't has this bug though and I don't remember having it on other distributions using firefox 2.x.

It is still valid with 2.0.0.14, hopefully fixed in firefox3 because of gnome-printing usage

(Mandriva applies a lot of patches to their firefox, maybe one of them fixes this)

No it's not fixed in Firefox 3, that's why I reported the bug ;). See the duplicate.

In firefox 20.0, print to file defaults to letter. If I change this to A4, the PDF file on disk is still marked as size Letter. So various PDF readers assume it's Letter.

in print-to-file I first have to select a different paper size (any different paper size), then re-select A4, then I get A4 paper size in the .pdf. Otherwise I get letter.

printer_Print_to_File.print_paper_name=iso_a4

I have just followed the procedure of;

1) Download Firefox-24.0 English(UK) version for Linux
2) Download Firefox-24.0 English(UK) version for Linux again and compare just to be sure I didn't accidentally get the wrong one
3) Check environment and observe LANG=en_NZ.UTF-8
4) Check printer settings and see that default paper size is A4
5) rm -rf ~/.mozilla so there are no previous settings.
6) As root, rm -rf /opt/firefox and extract the one I just downloaded
7) as normal user again, run firefox and get the usual first-run page
8) about:config and search for paper_size

Observe that paper size is letter.

There is nothing on my computer that suggests it should be using letter, and no other program that I ever print from has EVER decided that the paper size should be letter. Only firefox gets this wrong. It's been getting it wrong now for well over ten years.

I like everything else about firefox except for this one infuriating bug.

This bug was first filed in 2002. It's now 2013. I've just upgraded to Firefox 24.0 on all my machines and my default paper size has, once again as it does every upgrade, reverted to the US_Letter papersize.

I live in the other 96% of the world that uses A4 paper, so every time I try to print from Firefox I get an error message on my printer.

OpenOffice and Libreoffice get the paper size right. GIMP gets the paper size right. Inkscape gets the papersize right. Abiword gets the paper size right. Gedit gets the paper size right. Tuxpaint gets the papersize right. EVERY OTHER program I use under any distro of Linux manages to correctly determine that I use A4 paper and doesn't give me any problems.

But not Firefox.

Firefox defaults to US_Letter. Even though my printer is set for A4. Even though my language is en_NZ. Even when I've manually changed ALL of the defaults back to A4 under about:config it still bloody-mindedly sets everything back to US-Letter every singe time there's some minor point-update of Firefox.

Firefox is the ONLY program that does this.

And it's been doing it far too long.

Pleas, for the love of Free Software, FIX THIS BUG.

I have submitted a duplicate and have been following this bug for years, saddly seeing no resolution at all. Some stuff must be made clear:

Paper size names are surely locale dependent ("Letter" in the US is "Carta" in Brazil), but the default value for the paper size is NOT. It is determined by the host operating system, i.e., the software component which is responsible for handling the printers and their queues. Any default value provided by Firefox, anywhere, is WRONG. Please find every line setting a default value and get rid of it.

I have not noticed this bug acting for quite a while in Windows and Mac OS, so this is clearly a platform independent feature which which was corrected the wrong way, probably in the platform dependent module. The linux module should get this values from cups, and that's it -- why on earth does 'letter' keeps popping up? Where does this value come from? Please get rid of it, I already abandoned Firefox for any printing in my Linux boxes, and I am on the verge of abandoning it whatsoever, just because of this stupid little bug which persists for more than a decade.

I cannot even find a place to buy letter-sixed paper if I needed to. It doesn't exist in Brazil, although some weird legal sizes are still used in some time-shifted places like notary offices and advocacy firms.

Weather websites are smart enough to tell I'm im Rio de Janeiro, but show temperatures in Fahrenheit and wind speed in miles/h. My new GPS app knows I'm im Brazil but shows distandes in miles and yards. My music editor (made in Europe!) gets the paper size right, but still defaults margins in inches, and worst: when I change them, they get rounded to the nearest inch fraction, so I keep getting 2.98 mm instead of 3.00 ! How an European software chooses to use inches inside it is beyond my understanding. This must have something to do with (very old) development frameworks.

Firefox should not be this dumb, and specially not in a internationally freely distributed OS like Linux.

Please do something. Let us get rid of all US medieval defaults, they're like a curse.

I completely agree with the last two commenters. This bug is getting beyond ridiculous. It is an embarrassment for Mozilla. Just fix it, already.

Well the whole situation is very complex, the other platform code is more or less broken too.
Bug 629500 sums the whole situation quite good and looks like a welcome refactor of the whole code base, maybe it will land in the next years? Feels like gecko/firefox printing is stuck in IE6 age...

I'm also annoyed that every firefox i run have the letter as default page size... and of course, one only discovers this after trying to print and nothing show up on the printer.

If in the past, print was little used, with the PDFjs, people start to print a lot more from firefox, making this issue more important.

If this can not be "fixed", at very least remove the default, leave it BLANK... on first printing, ask what paper size one wants... is not as friendly as a default, but having a broken default, trying to print and getting nothing is even worst. Most people will never know that the problem is the wrong paper size and don't understand why they don't have any printout.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=947125

Actually, while the windows version works better, it is screwed too, specially on unusually paper sizes and margins.

The main problem with "letter" is, that the gtk code part can't understand ps paper names, and the ps paper names doesn't understand iso_a4.

The right solution would be to drop the whole thing and query printer and paper names directly via ipp or use only gtk code and throw the old cups lib and ps based query solution.

Considering the other bug #629500 is stuck as well.
My solution will be my own private inhouse addon as can no longer wait for a solution.
The win32 version works more or less, except CSS2 Margins are still broken.
For the linux version I plan to to use a ipp based solution or directly accessing cups via js-ctypes.

Accessing CUPS via socket and ipp protocol, query paper sizes, create a postscript file and send it directly should be a more future proof technology. Technical that should work on OSX and if you have the right url with any ipp aware network printer, but that isn't my goal.

This bug is not half as bad now that the fix for bug 446041 provides that
print.print_paper_* prefs (once they exist) will override
print.postscript.paper_size.

The print.print_paper_* prefs will record the previous setting, but this will
only be different from print.postscript.paper_size if the value is been
changed in the page setup.

There is also much code here that can be removed and so make the use of
different prefs somewhat less confusing.

Created attachment 8620681
remove ununsed nsIPrintSettings::printCommand and print_command prefs

These was used only to write to and read from each other.

Created attachment 8620682
use GTK default paper size and orientation

In the nsPrintSettingsGTK constructor, gtk_paper_size_new(nullptr) gets the
system default paper size from the locale and gtk_page_setup_new() sets
default orientation to portrait.

These are subsequently overridden by prefs if any have been saved from
a previous nsPrintSettingsGTK.

Created attachment 8620683
remove print(|.<modulename>)(|.printer_<printername>).filename pref reading code

There are no default pref values, and even if some have been set, the value
is subsequently overridden by the print.print_to_filename pref, which exists
if saved from a previous nsPrintSettingsGTK.

Created attachment 8620684
remove meaningless GetPrintMethod()

Created attachment 8620685
part 5: remove ununsed plexName colorspace resolutionName and downloadFonts

This was only used to write to and read from otherwise unused preferences.

Comment on attachment 8620682
use GTK default paper size and orientation

Review of attachment 8620682:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

So with this patch, do we still remember the user's paper size in some way? How?

Comment on attachment 8620682
use GTK default paper size and orientation

(In reply to Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (Mozilla Corporation) from comment #89)
> So with this patch, do we still remember the user's paper size in some way?

Yes. The code removed here was not reading user's prefs. Those prefs were never saved.

> How?

(In reply to Karl Tomlinson (ni?:karlt) from comment #85)
> These are subsequently overridden by prefs if any have been saved from
> a previous nsPrintSettingsGTK.

This happens in nsPrintOptions from InitPrintSettingsFromPrefs(), called after
InitPrintSettingsFromPrinter().

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/annotate/9ebd530c5843/widget/nsPrintOptionsImpl.cpp#l542
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/annotate/9ebd530c5843/dom/base/nsGlobalWindow.cpp#l7011

Created attachment 8621437
part 4: remove meaningless GetPrintMethod() v1.1

Also removed a now-unused nsresult and a repeated argument sanity check.

Comment on attachment 8621437
part 4: remove meaningless GetPrintMethod() v1.1

Review of attachment 8621437:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Delicious!

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/f3661245688b
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/d799f63ed244
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/c96721303125
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/86f5957e60f9
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/78349b2422e8

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f3661245688b
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/d799f63ed244
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c96721303125
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/86f5957e60f9
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/78349b2422e8

This appears to have broken printer settings on Windows with e10s enabled (bug 1176141).

(In reply to Brian Birtles (:birtles) from comment #95)
> This appears to have broken printer settings on Windows with e10s enabled
> (bug 1176141).

My bad, this bug has nothing to do with it.