[gentoo-user] Re: [was: What can cause printer to crop top of page?] /etc/papersize is ignored

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

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TLDR: Why is the content of my /etc/papersize being ignored?

More detail below.

On Friday, 22 December 2017 16:30:06 GMT Mick wrote:
> On Thursday, 21 December 2017 23:20:24 GMT you wrote:
> > On Thursday, 21 December 2017 23:01:50 GMT Walter Dnes wrote:
> > >   Is there a default page size setting in your desktop environment that
> > > could've changed?
> > 
> > This problem is happening across different PCs, desktops/DEs and different
> > applications.  The common factor is they are all using CUPS, the same
> > brother driver and the default page size of A4.
> > 
> > I'll have another poke tomorrow into the http GUI of the printer and then
> > try to print with MSWindows to see what happens.
> 
> MSWindows prints fine, just as Linux used to until recently.  I printed a
> portrait layout from Firefox on both MSWindows and Linux.

A number of you hinted at a paper size mismatch - between printer and PC.  You 
were correct!  I foolishly believed what the cups GUI told me, despite some 
strange behaviour I came across.

In particular, modifying the printer using the cups GUI ends up changing 
*some* of the default paper size fields from "A4" (as shown in the GUI) to 
"Letter" - as shown in this extract of /etc/cups/ppd/HL-3140CW.ppd:

grep Default /etc/cups/ppd/HL-3140CW.ppd
*DefaultColorSpace: RGB
*%DefaultOutputOrder: Reverse
*DefaultPageSize: A4
*DefaultPageRegion: A4
*DefaultImageableArea: Letter
*DefaultPaperDimension: Letter
[snip ...]

Using the cups GUI to 'Set Default Settings' and (re)selecting "A4" seems to 
work, as far as the ppd file is concerned.

However, when I set the printer's Tray 1 from "Any" size to "A4" using its 
control panel and tried to print a page with:

lpr -o fit-to-page -o media=A4 -P 'HL-3140CW' test_print.txt

the printer started blinking like a Christmas tree with the message:

 Size mismatch. Load Letter paper and press Go.

So I looked in /etc/papersize and saw it is "a4":

$ cat /etc/papersize 
a4

Then I checked the $PAPERSIZE and $PAPERCONF variables both of which appeared 
to not being set.  Using paperconf to interrogate the default setting I got 
this beauty:

$ paperconf -d
letter

What the ...?!

So, why is /etc/papersize being ignored?

PS. I noticed my locale has LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8". Not sure if relevant, but 
thought of mentioning it just in case.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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