Bugzilla – Bug 137614
Slow printing of graphics in SuSe 10.0
Last modified: 2006-01-12 08:07:24 UTC
The printing of graphic files (jpg, png) is very slow in SuSe 10.0. It takes 5 minutes to print the file of 69 kb 630x480 pixels, and, in essense, infinitely long for larger files. The problem is common to all graphic program used, which are gwenview, gimp, showFoto, internal konqueror viewer. However, text files, *.doc files and pdfs print ok. Also, any *.jpg file prints ok from OO Draw. The problem is found for two (of 2) platforms. 1) HP LJ 2300d + SuSe 10.0 i386 2) HP LJ 1200 + SuSe 10.0 x86_64 Both printers are connected via usb port. For comparison. I booted from ubuntu 5.10 live-cd, and printed the desktop picture (appr. 1Mb) using eyegnome. It took 14 seconds from the cold start. The same picture was processing in SuSe for more than 15 minutes (using gwenview), after which I cancelled the task. This bug is critical, taking into account its existence on 2 independent platforms.
The problem was found for the default 2.6.13 kernel. Upgrading to 2.6.15 rc5 kernel from the 'kod' does not improve the situation.
(In reply to comment #1) > Upgrading to 2.6.15 rc5 kernel from the 'kod' does not improve the situation. This should be corrected. The bug seems to be solved. After the kernel upgrade, I found two printers in YaST instead of one. I deleted the clone, configured the remainig printer. After which Gimp printed the 1Mb 1600x1200 photo in appr. 10 seconds. So the problem of slow print is solved by the kernel update to the version 2.6.15 rc5. Note that printing via gwenview remains inacceptably slow. However, this seems to be the problem of software, rather than of system. The size of printing task that is formed by gwenview may become as large as 50 Mb for comparably small file, which probably speaks of non-optimal rendering mechanism.
Which printer drivers (i.e. which PPD files) do you use? The PPD files are /etc/cups/ppd/<queuename>.ppd Attach the PPDs as mime type text/plani to this bug. As far as I know your printers are PostScript printers. Note that when you use them as PostScript printers it may be the PostScript interpreter in the printer which takes so much time. I.e. test how long it takes until the print job is done on the host (use "lpstat -p" to watch when it is done on the host) and then wait how long it takes until the printer ejects the sheet. I cannot reproduce it in PostScript mode with my HP LasaerJet 1220 (which is a 1200 with a mounted scanner unit). For the 400kb 1280x1024 24-bit color JPEG file /usr/share/wallpapers/suse-default.jpeg it takes about 30 seconds until the job is finished on my host and about 15 more seconds until the printer ejects the sheet i.e. 45 seconds for all in PostScript mode. In contrast if I use my printer in PCL5e mode with the ljet4 driver, i.e. when I use the PPD file /usr/share/cups/model/HP/LaserJet_1200-ljet4.ppd.gz or /usr/share/cups/model/Generic/PCL_5e_Printer-ljet4.ppd.gz it takes only 15 seconds for all. As you wrote that "any *.jpg file prints ok from OO Draw" it seems to show that the reason is neither the CUPS printing system nor the printer but something else. How do you print when you print JPEG files except from OO Draw? Is it also slow when you print them via command like like lp -d <queue> -o scaling=100 /usr/share/wallpapers/suse-default.jpeg The bug is not critical (not even major) because there is no major loss of functionality, see https://bugzilla.novell.com/page.cgi?id=fields.html#bug_severity
In general it is fixed (see comment #2). Regarding gwenview: File a seperate new bug report if you like. I don't know gwenview. Perhaps there are options in gwenview like image rendering resolution or bits per color or something similar which let you adjust the size of its printing output, see http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2000/08/jsmeix_print-kompatibel.html "Potential Problems with PostScript Printers".