Inkscape

inkscape not printing complete legal size doc

Asked by Ray Keefe

I'm using Inkscape .91 with Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa xfce 32 bit.

I have had no success getting Inkscape print my patterns on US legal size 8.5"x14" paper. It cuts off the bottom 3".

Two different printers have been tried same result both are HP's, a C4600 and Photosmart 6520. I've verified it's not a printer or Linux problem by creating a text doc in Office as legal size it printed fine. It appears to me that Inkscape is only sending info on 8.5x11 to the printer's instead of 8.5"x14". The 4600 is connected via USB and the 6520 is a wireless network printer.

The properties in Inkscape is correctly set at legal and not letter. I've tried creating a new drawing in Inkscape and same result, the bottom 3" cut off the print out.

I can print it to file as a PDF and it will print completely, BUT it shrinks the output to less than the original size! That is not acceptable, I need them to be the correct size to fit my blank wood board.

I need this to work, since I'm changing over from WinXP Pro and Printmaster Gold ver 7. The drawings I create are my patterns for my wood craft items the printed patterns need to be exact.

I did find one reference to this exact problem posted 4 years ago, the posters solution was to open the SVG file in Chromium and print it. That's not a solution or an option.

Anybody got any ideas or is this a bug in Inkscape?

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Hachmann (marenhachmann) said : 		#1

Hi Ray,

I can't help with the actual bug (might be the one about custom size... bug #630635), but as a quick workaround to get you to do your woodworking, I would suggest you export as 600dpi (or whichever resolution your printer can print) png image and print from another application, e.g. the Gimp.

Kind regards,
 Maren

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Ray Keefe (thewoodenham) said : 		#2

Thanks Maren,

I'm still poking at this issue.

So far I've been able to print the legal sized pattern from one of my Win XP machines to the network printer and it came out perfect. Landscape and the correct size. It had Inkscape .48 on it. Next I downloaded .91, installed it in a new folder. It printed the same file correctly also.

So now it's back to the Linux box. I just tried exporting the file as a PNG and opened it in Gimp (I've only used Gimp once before so I'm completely lost in it).

First thing Gimp did is change if from 8.5"x14" to 10"x17". I figured well let me try it anyway, sent it to the printer. What came out was the complete pattern, only shrunken down and printed in portrait instead of landscape, it showed as landscape on the screen.

I tried resetting the "canvas" to legal size and it promptly chopped off most of my image. I did check the printer settings in Gimp and it was set for Legal size and landscape printing. So for now Gimp is out of the question for me, I don't need one more thing to try to learn on top of a new OS and Inkscape.

I've got a couple more boxes here that I was setting other versions of Linux up on, I'll put one of those on the bench next and install Inkscape and see what I get.

I did check the link you gave about the bug, it sounds like what I thought something with the way Inkscape is handing off the info and they way Linux deals with it. I'll let you know what happens when I try it on the other boxes.

Thanks,
Ray

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Hachmann (marenhachmann) said : 		#3

In Gimp, you do not need to set the canvas size or anything.

Just open the file, go to Print, then use the print dialog with its print preview. Select a paper size in the second tab, then switch to the image properties tab.

There you can set the exact size of the print, and it works (at least for me) perfectly (although I seem to remember that the print dialog might look different for different printers, but just take a look - it would be a very quick solution, and almost nothing new to learn).

See this screenshot http://imgur.com/GceZWbul.png

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Ray Keefe (thewoodenham) said : 		#4

That almost worked.

Got Gimp to print it in landscape finally, only it got shrunk.

Next I tried to set the size of the print in the Image Settings tab, to the desired size of the pattern, but ended up making it smaller still.

I finally figured out the image properties to where I've one one pattern within an 1/8 of an inch or about 3mm from the size I need. Now I need to go back to Inkscape and adjust the pattern there then go back to Gimp and fine tune the image properties more.

This is an extra step, but it's workable until somebody can figure out how to make Inkscape and CUPS talk nice to each other.

I'm still going to give it try on the other Linux boxes I have here. In the meantime I'll leave this unsolved.

Thanks for your patience.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#5

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.