Bugs item #979164, was opened at 2004-06-24 20:47
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by oliv
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Category: Printing
Group: Win32
Status: Open
Resolution: Out of Date
Priority: 6
Private: No
Submitted By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: [WIN] no option to print via PS, unlike Linux
Initial Comment:
I have a 28kB file that isn't terribly complex. Printing it
to a laser printer is fine and quick under 98 or XP. But
when I go to print to our Universal Laser Systems laser
engraver, under 98 it freezes (print dialog stuck at 4k),
and under XP it behaves similarly, except that the print
dialog says "(however much) of 380 MB" and moves very
slowly. The same engraver works fine under any
operating system from CorelDRAW 9 or 12,
DrawingBoard, and even, IIRC, AutoCAD. So to get
these things I made in Inkscape engraved, I had to go
to CorelDRAW 12 (only one that opens SVG) on XP
(CD12 doesn't support 98), import SVG (doesn't work
perfectly), fix it, save it in CorelDRAW 9 format, open it
in CD9 on our 98 box, fix it again, and print it.
CorelDRAW is a piece of crud compared to Inkscape. I
can't even edit text without problems, nor will it properly
right-align anything I type in. Inkscape does these
perfectly. Please help.
I tried 0.39 under 98 too and it did the same thing.
Thanks, and keep up the awesome work on your product!
Kev
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Comment By: olivier ripoll (oliv)
Date: 2007-10-11 10:12
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So it seems there are as many "inkscape 0.45.1" as there are users ;)
My Windows' one has 2 ways of printing: The usual one (also accessible
with ctrl+P) and a 'direct printing' (in File menu, it is just above the
normal 'print'). I never used it and am reluctant to even try at work. But
I see no ps/bitmap option anywhere in the normal print one.
I could check on my linux computer at home, but I am not sure I have 0.45
on it (I think I am still using 0.43 or 0.44). And I have no printer so,
IIRC, I do not have cups installed (nor any other printing system,).
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Comment By: molumen (molumen)
Date: 2007-10-11 01:07
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Bulia,
In my previous post I was calling "direct printing" the CTRL+P function
(when you directly send data to a printer from Inkscape). In 0.45.1 on
Windows there was only that printing possibility.
I just had a look at Inkscape0710091446 and I see a "Direct Printing"
option that opens the PS/Bitmap dialog you speak of (I somehow missed its
introduction in the devel builds).
BUT: when I choose one of the possibilities (PS or Bitmap) the only thing
I see is a cmd (dos) black screen that disappears without showing any signs
of activity (it disappearsalmost instantly when PS output is chosen and
lasts a few seconds when BITMAP output is chosen)... Where is the printed
file saved (if any file is created at all)? This behaviour really looks
like a bug...
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2007-10-10 22:30
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Yes, I see this choice on Linux and I conform it's missing on Windows.
Which seems to be the source of this bug, so renaming. You may want to ask
on the devel mailing list about possible reasons for this difference (I
have no idea)
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2007-10-10 21:25
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Thanks everybody, these are handy things to know.
> The first thing I get when I print is a dialog asking whether I want
postscript printing or bitmap.
Is this on a Linux version? I don't get this at all with
Inkscape-0.45.1-1.win32. I think this would be it, if anything...
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2007-10-10 19:07
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> Looks like the problem is related to the fact that direct printing from
Inkscape results in sending all the data in raster format.
The first thing I get when I print is a dialog asking whether I want
postscript printing or bitmap. I choose PS and it prints correctly and
quickly for me (of course, only for documents that are PS-friendly, i.e. no
transparency or blur). So I don't really understand what is going on here.
Are you all deliberately choosing bitmap? Then indeed it will result in a
huge file most likely.
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Comment By: molumen (molumen)
Date: 2007-10-10 18:54
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Looks like the problem is related to the fact that direct printing from
Inkscape results in sending all the data in raster format. The most complex
the svg is, the bigger will the data sent to the printer be. And I can
imagine that sending 380 Mb to a printer can take reeeeeealy a lot of time
an generally would result in a failure as most of the printer drivers would
die under such a huge amount of data.
It's just that the direct printing from Inkscape is still at its early
stage of development. As a workaround, the best would be to export as PDF
and then print from Acrobat Reader or any other software able to print from
PDF.
For the direct printing, well we just have to wait a future version with
improvements...
>> One other thing, trying to import an Inkscape .ps or .eps
>> or .pdf file into Corel results in no errors but no image
>> either. But that could be a Corel thing, because it's old.
Depending on the PDF, PS or EPS version and type, Corel can have problems
with import. I remember that in Corel9 it was really a problem. But from my
latest observations with PDFs from recent Inkscape SVN versions and Corel
12, most of the problems are gone and even complex PDFs from Inkscape open
very well in Corel 12.
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Comment By: olivier ripoll (oliv)
Date: 2007-10-10 18:16
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Today, I tried to print a 1 page svg document, the Git Cheat Sheet[1] (a
little less than 168 KBytes), on a HP Color Laserjet 3800n under Windows XP
sp2, using Inkscape 0.45.1 and it generated again a huge spool (I stopped
it at around 76 MiB). I could export to pdf and print the pdf (pdf is
~3MiB, spoll went up to 11MiB)
So it looks like this issue is still present.
[1] http://ktown.kde.org/~zrusin/git/git-cheat-sheet.svg
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2007-08-29 16:11
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I'm not sure if you would want to re-open given your comments buliabyak,
but as an update, I was in town yesterday and tried on the latest stable
release (Inkscape-0.45.1-1.win32.exe). Printing from Inkscape, the printer
dialog says it's spooling, and doesn't want to change from that. Trying to
kill Inkscape via normal Alt-F4 or close buttons a couple times gets the
computer going so slowly that I can actually see parts of individual lines
being redrawn. Once Inkscape is killed it's okay, but deleting the print
job takes a while as well. The print job never makes it to the machine.
If I save as PDF from Inkscape, then try to print from Adobe, while it
shows up correctly on-screen, once it's gone to the engraver, the job shows
up as 0 power, 0 speed (i.e., empty), no matter how thick I make the
circle.
This was on 1000 PPI though...maybe it's too high, given that it's a 32x18
inch platform? I'll try something today if I can. Does Inkscape maybe
send some kind of bitmap data always?
The reason why I would bother bringing this up again on here is because
even on 1000 PPI, CorelDRAW 9 prints fine and very quickly to the engraver,
with much more complicated things than a lone circle. So given all this, I
would guess that either Corel puts out some kind of non-standard PS format
that our engraver happens to like (while not liking standard), or Inkscape
doesn't put out proper PS, or neither of them do and the engraver just
happens to like Corel's version. If it's the non-standard scenario, I
guess Inkscape can't be modified to work, because there's no way of knowing
what needs to be changed. But if Inkscape is the only one not conforming
to the standard, then it is an Inkscape issue. Either way, I won't be
offended if you close this again.
One other thing, trying to import an Inkscape .ps or .eps or .pdf file
into Corel results in no errors but no image either. But that could be a
Corel thing, because it's old.
Kev
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2007-07-18 22:22
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This bug was not well defined to begin with. If printing to file works but
printing directly to printer does not, I don't see how this can be
Inkscape's bug, because it sends the same data in both cases. It may be a
trouble with GTK, with your OS, with your print driver. Sorry we can't be
of much help but you should understand that debugging such issues remotely
is extremely difficult. We are none of us experts in print. We just make a
drawing app that can print (admittedly in a very limited way) via
Postscript. Whatever happens to our PS after that is beyond our control.
So, if you can test and reproduce with the latest version, and if the test
somehow points that it is indeed Inkscape fault, feel free to reopen.
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Comment By: olivier ripoll (oliv)
Date: 2007-07-18 21:35
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That's a very strange way to close bugs. There may be no news because the
bug is still here... or do we have to post a bug every day saying "still
buggy". You could have asked first the reporters (original reporter +
duplicate bug reporter) if they could still see it, and in case they did
not answer within 1 week, close the bug.
Lst time I checked, a few months ago, it was still present. Now, I changed
company, so the printer is different, and this may not be reproducable any
more, but in early 2007, I still could see the bug.
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2007-07-18 18:42
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Too old, no news. A lot has changed since then, including in print. Open a
new bug report if you have a recent reproducible case.
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2005-07-13 22:06
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Vector printing is there all right, though maybe not on
windows (I'm not sure of that). It's done via PostScript.
You can always export your document as PS and print that
file by some other means (maybe just sending the file to the
printer will work).
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2005-07-13 22:01
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So when you print to a file, does it have vector primitive
instructions in the file or something?
Hmm...if it's sending as a bitmap, then we wouldn't really
want to use the engraver for that anyway. Well, we would,
for etching things, but when you actually go to cut
something out (from plastic, for example), vector printing
gives you a MUCH smoother cut. If you cut by bitmap, for
example, a circle cuts like this:
-
/-\
/-\
| |
/-\
| |
\ /
/-\
| |
\_/
...so it's wildly jumping from edge to edge rather than
doing a smooth one-piece cut. On most materials this
results in a very noticably ragged edge. You can actually
set vector or raster mode printing for each of the primary
colours plus orange and black in the print driver interface,
but IIRC the setting didn't affect the Inkscape printed,
although I could double-check that if you wanted.
Is vector printing planned?
Thanks,
Kev
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Comment By: Richard Hughes (cyreve)
Date: 2005-06-30 22:28
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How odd. You're absolutely right about not using all the
memory when printing to file.
Anyway, what's happening is that Inkscape's Windows
printing backend is very simple and basically just renders the
whole page to a bitmap and prints that. The bitmap is, of
course, rendered at the print resolution which gives us
1200*8.0 * 1200*11.5 * 3 = 380MB.
The simplest way to reduce this size would be to omit tiles
outside the drawing's bounding box. The correct fix would be
to implement a drawing-primitive based Windows backend,
but that would quickly fall apart in the presence of gradient
fills and suchlike.
As for the engraver, I presume it reports a very high resolution
to Windows. It may even be that it attempts to draw shapes
as primitives because that gives better output.
I can only assume that the slowdown is caused by these huge
bitmaps exceeding the virtual memory size of the machine
they're running on. Note that, in general, you will use twice the
size of the bitmap because you can expect it to be copied at
least once.
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2005-06-30 00:44
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Just tried...nope, it's only 2KB, looks normal (I guess) inside.
We're leaving for about ten days, fyi, so I'll have to
continue whatever else you want me to try when I get back.
Thanks,
Kev
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2005-06-30 00:29
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Can you print to the file? Does it run amok too? If so can
you attach here the first several Kb of the print file?
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2005-06-29 16:44
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It doesn't seem to have a standard resolution. The closest
thing I could find to that was PPI, which is laser pulses
per inch, and that was set to 500.
I tried again this morning just to see what the
circumstances were that allowed me to get the doc to the
printer last time, but I couldn't get it to go. I created a
new Inkscape doc, 32 inches by 18 inches (the platform size)
and drew a 1 inch circle, turned off the fill, set the
stroke to .01 inch black, and printed, this time watching
the queue. It started sending 549 MB, so even though it was
still going up through 80 MB, I cancelled, since our printer
only has 16 MB and likes to keep everything in memory before
printing AFAIK.
Maybe I could send you the driver by e-mail or something.
I'm not sure if they'd have a beef with me posting it here
or not.
Kev
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Comment By: olivier ripoll (oliv)
Date: 2005-06-29 09:37
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the driver is PCL6 (60.3.14.2)
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Comment By: Richard Hughes (cyreve)
Date: 2005-06-28 21:42
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Do you know which printer driver you're using? HP offer three
different ones for that model: PCL 5.1, PCL 6 and
PostScript. The About tab of the printer properties sheet
should give you this information.
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Comment By: olivier ripoll (oliv)
Date: 2005-06-28 09:43
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cyreve: No, I am not trying thin strokes. Actually, even
printing an empty page results in the very same effect: tens
of MiB in the spool , nothing printed and inkscape freezing
until I cancel the print.
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Comment By: Richard Hughes (cyreve)
Date: 2005-06-28 00:37
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I am interested in Kevin's comment that he's using a very thin
stroke, particularly since the lj4200 is a 1200dpi printer
whereas the ij2200 is only 300dpi. Are you also trying to print
very thin strokes Olivier? Could there perhaps be a specific
width at which it fails? Regardless, could you upload a file
that fails somewhere please, or e-mail it to me (cyreve at
users.sourceforge)?
And finally, a question for Kevin: Universal Laser Systems
don't seem to have a link where I can download their drivers,
so can I ask you what resolution it reports to Windows? You
can find it near the bottom of the General page of the printer's
properties sheet.
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Comment By: olivier ripoll (oliv)
Date: 2005-06-27 16:49
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cyreve: I do not have permissions to update the driver. I am
printing through a server, and this server is used by 200
people, so simple users cannot play with its setup. I have
asked the admins if they agreed to update, but I do not know
if they will accept (usually, admins are reluctant to change
a working set-up because one single software of one single
user has problems).
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2005-06-27 15:53
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Okay, we've since upgraded our laser engraver computer to an
XP box, so we're now for sure on the latest driver, because
we had to get a new one for it to work. Using Inkscape .41,
I got two files to go to the printer, but on neither of them
did it pick anything up to actually laser (I press start on
the machine, and it beeps saying it's done.) The file was
just a 1-inch-diameter circle, with .01 px stroke. The
third time I changed it to .01 inch stroke, and printed, and
it didn't make it to the printer--the print dialog box
showed 89.1mb/89.1mb had been sent, but it didn't make it
over. It didn't freeze either though. So it's improving. :)
Kev
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Comment By: Richard Hughes (cyreve)
Date: 2005-06-26 21:28
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oliv: Since your printer is a tad more common than Kevin's, I
went to the HP site and downloaded the latest PCL6 drivers
for it. I don't have an lj4200, of course, but I would expect that
using the print to file option would allow me to experience the
same problem. It didn't.
Could you try both upgrading your printer driver and, naturally,
using the current version of inkscape please? Also try using
the print to file checkbox, just in case it's a really weird bug.
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2004-12-17 16:37
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Okay, I was able to try 0.40 today on the Win98 box
attached to the X660. With the circletest file, upon printing,
the printer icon appeared in the tray, so I double-clicked it to
watch, and before the window came up, I got a blue screen,
fatal exception 0e, with Windows as the title, but pressing
enter had me back with an open, empty printer box and
Inkscape was no longer running. I haven't found out yet
where our XP laptop is floating around here, so I haven't tried
it in that yet.
Sorry for the delay.
I should be around for a week or two more for any additional
testing.
Lack
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Comment By: olivier ripoll (oliv)
Date: 2004-10-28 10:23
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I am the reporter of the duplicate bug (998672). I would
like to add another data point:
We have just purchased a new inkjet colour printer (HP
business inkjet 2600) and printing on this one works. I am
using a 0.40 CVS build dating a a month ago or so.
But printing the same image (a simple square) on our black
and white laserjet 4200 results in this freezing of inkscape
a a huge file in the printer spooling.
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Comment By: Kees Cook (nemies)
Date: 2004-10-28 06:12
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Actually... it seems from reading the other bug report that
there is a difference between direct printing and PS file
export. It's the direct printing that breaks. Very strange.
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Comment By: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Date: 2004-10-28 02:27
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As I said...not any time particularly soon (unless someone
else who's having this would like to) but I would need help for
then anyway--where does the file appear? I only knew it
was so big through the Printers dialog, but I didn't actually
get a glimpse of a file anywhere. Is it a temp file in
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP or something?
Thanks,
Kev
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2004-10-27 23:32
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So can you submit the beginning of that 380 Mb file?
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Comment By: John Cliff (johncliff)
Date: 2004-10-27 23:30
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increased priority as this is affecting other people on normal
printers too.
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?
func=detail&aid=998672&group_id=93438&atid=604306
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2004-10-24 16:04
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This has been on my todo list for a long time and may be a bit
longer yet. :|
Sorry, I'm not sure how I didn't attach that circle test the first
time, and now I can't find it. All it was was a plain circle
though. The main thing was the combination of Inkscape and the
laser engraver. Any other combination of software and hardware
seemed to work fine.
Unfortunately, I can't do anything with the laser engraver remotely,
and I'm away from work during the school year. Next time I'm home
for a weekend and can get out to work, I'll try it with the latest
build and report back. That may be a few weeks from now, though,
with midterms and such going on right now. Again, my apologies.
Thanks for your patience.
Actually, wait a minute...I see two copies of that circle test file
just above the submit button. ???
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2004-10-24 08:45
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Kevin, can you please attach more info as described below?
We want to resolve this bug one way or the other.
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2004-09-14 01:53
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I cannot reproduce this either. The sample svg generates
small and correct postscript (though I did not actually
print it, but I suppose this should not matter). I would
appreciate if the submitter could test a current build. If
the pronblem persits, please also attach the beginning of
the generated file (not the entire 380 Mb of course, about
200 Kb will be enough).
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Comment By: Kees Cook (nemies)
Date: 2004-07-10 11:29
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I'm having problems reproducing this bug. All the prints
I've generated are small and display correctly. Do you have
other examples?
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2004-07-07 15:13
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Here's a simple test circle that does the same thing. I just
noticed that trying to open the printers window just after
printing results in a fatal exception, then it shows the
window, but there are no print jobs in it, and it doesn't get to
the printer. (Under 98--didn't get a chance to try with the
XP laptop to see the file size.)
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Comment By: Kevin Field (lackofknack)
Date: 2004-07-07 15:12
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Here's a simple test circle that does the same thing. I just
noticed that trying to open the printers window just after
printing results in a fatal exception, then it shows the
window, but there are no print jobs in it, and it doesn't get to
the printer. (Under 98--didn't get a chance to try with the
XP laptop to see the file size.)
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Comment By: bulia byak (buliabyak)
Date: 2004-07-05 02:53
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Attaching the file that gave you problems would help us
locate the problem.
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