Bug 403263 - Okular scales down pages when printing
Summary: Okular scales down pages when printing
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 348172
Alias: None
Product: okular
Classification: Applications
Component: printing (show other bugs)
Version: 1.3.3
Platform: Other Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Okular developers
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2019-01-16 09:46 UTC by Sergio
Modified: 2019-01-17 09:06 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
Test document with cropmarks delimiting a 17 * 24.4 cm virtual page on A4 paper (25.35 KB, application/pdf)
2019-01-16 09:46 UTC, Sergio
Details

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Description Sergio 2019-01-16 09:46:24 UTC
Created attachment 117484 [details]
Test document with cropmarks delimiting a 17 * 24.4 cm virtual page on A4 paper

SUMMARY

In the preparation of a booklet, I have noticed that okular prints pages slightly scaled down, which hinders the booklet preparation process.

On the same system (linux, ubuntu 18.04), printing with an old acroread 9.5.5 and "page scaling = none" produces the correct output. So does printing with "master pdf editor" that is a QT application like okular. Hence, the issue doesn't seem to be in the system printing backend, rather in okular itself.

Let me detail the issue.

The booklet drafting process is based on a LaTeX flow. The booklet will eventually be printed on a 17*24.4 cm format. Drafts are produced on A4 paper with crop marks creating a "virtual" 17*24.4 cm page on the physical A4 page. The cropmarks are used to cut the draft copies down to the right format. This flow is supported by the LaTeX "crop" package.

Now the issue is that pages printed via okular have the crop marks in the wrong place. Once printed with okular, the virtual page ends up being 16.3 cm * 23.4 cm. Printing with acroread, masterpdf editor, etc. produces printouts where the virtual page inside the cropmarks is exactly 17 * 24.4.

An interesting fact is that okular has no "print scaling option" in its qt print dialog so it decides by itself whether to scale a printout or not. However, it should not arbitrarily decide to apply scaling to something that is A4 and meant to be printed on A4.

In case the latest okular/qt libraries combination does not show the issue, please do not just dismiss the bug, but consider backporting the fix. Specifically, I hope that the issue can be resolved for versions of okular working with qt 5.9.x that is the current qt version with long term support and the qt version shipped by most distros.


STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open a document with an A4 page and reference marks known to be at some distance.
2. Print with okular
3. Measure on paper the distance between the reference marks

OBSERVED RESULT

The distance between the reference marks is /less/ than it should.

EXPECTED RESULT

The distance between the reference marks should be the pre-assigned one.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Windows: 
MacOS: 
Linux/KDE Plasma: 
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 
KDE Frameworks Version: 
Qt Version: 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Comment 1 Oliver Sander 2019-01-16 09:51:07 UTC
> An interesting fact is that okular has no "print scaling option" in its qt print dialog so it decides by itself whether to scale a printout or not.

That feature is currently being worked on.  The current git master of Okular does have the option (under "PDF Options").
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2019-01-17 02:57:56 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 348172 ***
Comment 3 Sergio 2019-01-17 09:02:40 UTC
May not be an exact duplicate as but 348172 looks more like as an enhancement request or a request to restore functionality that got lost in the KDE 4 -> KDE 5 transition, while this is a bug.

While the provision of scaling options according 348172 would eliminate this bug as a side effect, until those are in place IMHO Okular should never scale down pages that already fit in the paper size.
Comment 4 Sergio 2019-01-17 09:06:46 UTC
Mentioning the item above as distributions are typically happy to incorporate/backport mere bug fixes, but typically not sympathetic to requests to update to totally new versions of software nor to backport new features in order to have bugs fixed.