Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.3.0)
Installed from:    Gentoo Packages

I have a printer (Samsung ML-2152W) which accepts postscript, but it's not optimized for it, so it takes its merry time rendering a page.

When I print from xpdf, an older version of Konqueror (3.2.x), Mozilla (1.7.3) or many other things, pages can take up to a minute to render.  (As you may know, Postscript can be painfully slow to render bitmap images, even on very sophistocated printers.)

The bug I'm reporting is this:  Since upgrading from 3.2.x to 3.3.0, konqueror generates postscript which makes the printer take up to 10 minutes to render a web page which I have sent to be printed.

Now, some may debate whether or not this is a "bug" in konqueror (or whatever generates postscript for printing pages), implying that the printer is just slow.  But the fact is that many printers take a while to render pages.  My printer is certainly not the only one which is going to be affected by this slowdown.  

I assume some changes have been made to konqueror's postscript generator which were intended to make it, say, more accurate.  However, it would seem that those changes result in a page which takes so long to render in the printer that the improved accuracy isn't worth the extra time.

I also notice that the window that pops up when the print-job is being generated by konqueror stays up much longer than it used to, suggesting that konqueror is going a lot more work to generate the postscript.

Here's a specific example:

http://www.e-rcps.com/pasta/main/fowl/chick_marsala.shtml

Mozilla takes about 2 or 3 seconds to generate the print job.  Konqueror takes about 10 seconds to generate the print job.

The printer renders and prints Mozilla's page in less than 30 seconds.  For Konqueror's, it takes 9 minutes.

Mozilla's resulting print is not only aesthetically more pleasing (my subjective opinion), but Mozilla manages to print everything on the web page, while Konqueror completely omits a number of the bitmaps (something much more objective).  (Mozilla does seem to choose the wrong font for some things, while Konqueror is truer to the web page on those things that it manages to print.)

Here's something to consider:  It's not THAT hard to tell the difference between 600DPI and 1200DPI, depending on what you're looking at on the page.  CUPS is configured to assume that the printer is 600DPI, while the printer renders postscript always at 1200DPI (why not!).  When I look at the print from Mozilla, black text is perfectly smooth, as far as I can tell with the naked eye.  On the page rendered by Konqueror, curves in black text look a little grainier.  This begs me to ask:  Is Konqueror trying to render the whole page as a bitmap and just translating it to Postscript?  That would explain the slowness!