[gentoo-amd64] KDE Print-Preview / PDF/PS Konqueror Problems

[gentoo-amd64] KDE Print-Preview / PDF/PS Konqueror Problems

[Richard Freeman]

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For quite a while I've been frustrated with what I assume is some kind
of kioslaves problem.  Print-preview does not work - I just get a
ghostscript output window and a few lines of what seems like meaningless
detail:

%%BoundingBox: 35 31 576 767
%%HiResBoundingBox: 35.549999 31.550554 575.027982 766.079977

Printing itself works fine.

Likewise, I cannot view ps/pdf files in knoqueror, but pdf files work
just fine with kpdf (same sorts of pop-up messages).  kghostview doesn't
work (generates messages like the above).  Re-emerging kghostview
doesn't seem to help.

Any idea what could cause this?  It doesn't seem to matter what app I
associate with the various mime types.
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: KDE Print-Preview / PDF/PS Konqueror Problems

[Duncan]

Richard Freeman <rich@thefreemanclan.net> posted
44EBBF63.3000808@thefreemanclan.net, excerpted below, on  Tue, 22 Aug 2006
22:37:23 -0400:

> For quite a while I've been frustrated with what I assume is some kind
> of kioslaves problem.  Print-preview does not work - I just get a
> ghostscript output window and a few lines of what seems like meaningless
> detail:
> 
> %%BoundingBox: 35 31 576 767
> %%HiResBoundingBox: 35.549999 31.550554 575.027982 766.079977
> 
> Printing itself works fine.
> 
> Likewise, I cannot view ps/pdf files in knoqueror, but pdf files work
> just fine with kpdf (same sorts of pop-up messages).  kghostview doesn't
> work (generates messages like the above).  Re-emerging kghostview
> doesn't seem to help.
> 
> Any idea what could cause this?  It doesn't seem to matter what app I
> associate with the various mime types.

I'm guessing it's a config problem, likely something in your user-specific
config (under ~/.kde).  Thus, the first step in testing is to either
create a new user with a default config and try it there, or backup and
delete your user config (while logged out of KDE), then log back in and
see if the problem still exists.

If the problem is gone with a default user config, then, if like me you
have enough customized settings you don't want to blow the /entire/ thing
away, it's time to start narrowing it down, restoring part of your old
config, testing, then either restoring more or deleting half the restored
config, until you narrow it down to first a single dir, then a single
file, then optionally a single section and/or line within that file.

That's the approach I'd take.

If the problem continues to exist with a "clean" user config, then more in
depth troubleshooting will be necessary.  However, I suspect it's the user
config, and if so, it's unlikely any amount of unmerging/remerging would
fix the problem.

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] KDE Print-Preview / PDF/PS Konqueror Problems

[Reinhard Kotucha]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Freeman <rich@thefreemanclan.net> writes:

  > For quite a while I've been frustrated with what I assume is some
  > kind of kioslaves problem.  Print-preview does not work - I just
  > get a ghostscript output window and a few lines of what seems like
  > meaningless detail:

  > %%BoundingBox: 35 31 576 767 
  > %%HiResBoundingBox: 35.549999 31.550554 575.027982 766.079977

This is not meaningless, but it seems that your previewer calls gs
with wrong arguments.

Try:

	gs -q -sDEVICE=bbox -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE somefile.ps

The bbox device calculates the bounding box of the content of the
page and for some reason nobody knows sends it output to STDERR.
It is supposed to be used by programs which convert ps to eps. 

Previewers should use -sDEVICE=x11 or -sDEVICE=x11alpha instead.
The latter performs antialiasing.

To find out how your previewer calls ghostscript you can try this:

   * temporarily replace /usr/bin/gs by a little shell script:
   _________________
   #!/bin/sh
   echo $0 "$@"
   _________________

   * start the previewer in an xterm so that the output of the script
     will appear in the terminal. 

You'll hopefully see with which arguments gs is called by the
previewer. I don't have KDE installed but the script works with gv.

BTW, gv allows you to configure this in the resources, see
/usr/share/X11/app-defaults/ .  I suppose that the KDE previewer works
similar as gv, so gv's texinfo manual provides some information about
the arguments.  Try:

       info gv

On the other hand, if they want to port KDE to Windows, I suppose that
they don't put their config files into X11 directories but I'm sure
you know that much better than me.

  > Printing itself works fine.

Yes, the printing system is a different thing and has it's own config
files.   

  > Likewise, I cannot view ps/pdf files in knoqueror, but pdf files
  > work just fine with kpdf (same sorts of pop-up messages).
  > kghostview doesn't work (generates messages like the above).
  > Re-emerging kghostview doesn't seem to help.

kpdf is derived from xpdf and doesn't use ghostscript.  Newer versions
might be based on poppler, but this doesn't matter in this context.

It seems that kghostview and konqueror share some code and/or probably
config files.  This makes a lot of sense.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] KDE Print-Preview / PDF/PS Konqueror Problems

[Richard Freeman]

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Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> Try:
> 
> 	gs -q -sDEVICE=bbox -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE somefile.ps
> 

This outputs:
rich@rich64 ~ $ gs -q -sDEVICE=bbox -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE print.ps
%%BoundingBox: 35 31 576 767
%%HiResBoundingBox: 35.549999 31.550554 575.027982 766.079977
%%BoundingBox: 36 616 575 767
%%HiResBoundingBox: 36.071999 616.121981 574.973982 766.079977

The ps file isn't rendered anywhere as far as I can tell.

gv print.ps works fine.

> To find out how your previewer calls ghostscript you can try this:
> 
>    * temporarily replace /usr/bin/gs by a little shell script:
>    _________________
>    #!/bin/sh
>    echo $0 "$@"
>    _________________
> 
>    * start the previewer in an xterm so that the output of the script
>      will appear in the terminal. 
> 
> You'll hopefully see with which arguments gs is called by the
> previewer. I don't have KDE installed but the script works with gv.
> 

Here is the output of kghostview:

/usr/bin/gs -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dSAFER -dPARANOIDSAFER -dDELAYSAFER
- -sInputFile=/home/rich/print.ps -c << /PermitFileReading [ InputFile ]
/PermitFileWriting [] /PermitFileControl [] >> setuserparams .locksafe -

Here is the print-preview output:

/usr/bin/gs -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dSAFER -dPARANOIDSAFER -dDELAYSAFER
- -sInputFile=/tmp/kde-rich/kdeprint_v0evD2L2 -c << /PermitFileReading [
InputFile ] /PermitFileWriting [] /PermitFileControl [] >> setuserparams
.locksafe -

Any ideas what might be wrong from this?
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: KDE Print-Preview / PDF/PS Konqueror Problems

[Richard Freeman]

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Duncan wrote:
> Thus, the first step in testing
> is to either create a new user with a default config and try it
> there, or backup and delete your user config (while logged out of
> KDE), then log back in and see if the problem still exists.
> 

As might be feared, for a new user account it works just fine.

> if like me you have enough customized settings you don't want to blow
> the /entire/ thing away, it's time to start narrowing it down

That would definitely be the goal...  :)

Any suggestions as to where I should start?  I'll start digging away...
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: KDE Print-Preview / PDF/PS Konqueror Problems

[Richard Freeman]

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Richard Freeman wrote:
> Any suggestions as to where I should start?  I'll start digging away...

Never mind.  I deleted ~/.kde/share/config/kghostviewrc and my problems
went away.  That is one file I can do without (my address book on the
other hand...).
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: KDE Print-Preview / PDF/PS Konqueror Problems

[Duncan]

Richard Freeman <rich@thefreemanclan.net> posted
44ED0F39.40205@thefreemanclan.net, excerpted below, on  Wed, 23 Aug 2006
22:30:17 -0400:

> Richard Freeman wrote:
>> Any suggestions as to where I should start?  I'll start digging away...
> 
> Never mind.  I deleted ~/.kde/share/config/kghostviewrc and my problems
> went away.  That is one file I can do without (my address book on the
> other hand...).

One more bug zapped! =8^)

Every KDE upgrade, it seems something or other quits, here.  I run
seriously customized, so resetting everything to the default and
recustomizing isn't a palatable option.  I've become rather adept at
finding the issue rather fast, but I always make a backup of the dir
before the upgrade, just in case something goes horribly wrong and it
destroys the entire config rather than just refusing to work in one or two
areas.

With KDE, the problem file is usually in one of two subdirs under
~/.kde/share, either apps or config.  Knowing that and the application
with the problem, it's a pretty quick job to check one, and if there's
nothing for the app there, check the other.  Under config, it's individual
files, under apps, its subdirs with a collection of files.  Some have
their config split so part exists in either location.  In any case, it's
usually a five-minute job to find the culprit, rename it, restart that
particular component of KDE, and verify.  Some things, like my
kicker/panel config, are so complex I'll actually dive into the file and
troubleshoot down to the individual section and line, rather than
recustomize the entire app from scratch.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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