[gentoo-user] Re: [was: What can cause printer to crop top of page?] /etc/papersize is ignored

[Mick]

On Wednesday, 27 December 2017 19:45:04 GMT Mick wrote:
> TLDR: Why is the content of my /etc/papersize being ignored?

Oops!  It is not ignored:

$ paperconf
a4

Which leaves my problem unanswered.  :-(

> More detail below.
>
> On Friday, 22 December 2017 16:30:06 GMT Mick wrote:
> > On Thursday, 21 December 2017 23:20:24 GMT you wrote:
> > > On Thursday, 21 December 2017 23:01:50 GMT Walter Dnes wrote:
> > > >   Is there a default page size setting in your desktop environment
> > > >   that
> > > >
> > > > could've changed?
> > >
> > > This problem is happening across different PCs, desktops/DEs and
> > > different
> > > applications.  The common factor is they are all using CUPS, the same
> > > brother driver and the default page size of A4.
> > >
> > > I'll have another poke tomorrow into the http GUI of the printer and
> > > then
> > > try to print with MSWindows to see what happens.
> >
> > MSWindows prints fine, just as Linux used to until recently.  I printed a
> > portrait layout from Firefox on both MSWindows and Linux.
>
> A number of you hinted at a paper size mismatch - between printer and PC.
> You were correct!  I foolishly believed what the cups GUI told me, despite
> some strange behaviour I came across.
>
> In particular, modifying the printer using the cups GUI ends up changing
> *some* of the default paper size fields from "A4" (as shown in the GUI) to
> "Letter" - as shown in this extract of /etc/cups/ppd/HL-3140CW.ppd:
>
> grep Default /etc/cups/ppd/HL-3140CW.ppd
> *DefaultColorSpace: RGB
> *%DefaultOutputOrder: Reverse
> *DefaultPageSize: A4
> *DefaultPageRegion: A4
> *DefaultImageableArea: Letter
> *DefaultPaperDimension: Letter
> [snip ...]
>
> Using the cups GUI to 'Set Default Settings' and (re)selecting "A4" seems to
> work, as far as the ppd file is concerned.
>
> However, when I set the printer's Tray 1 from "Any" size to "A4" using its
> control panel and tried to print a page with:
>
> lpr -o fit-to-page -o media=A4 -P 'HL-3140CW' test_print.txt
>
> the printer started blinking like a Christmas tree with the message:
>
>  Size mismatch. Load Letter paper and press Go.
>
> So I looked in /etc/papersize and saw it is "a4":
>
> $ cat /etc/papersize
> a4
>
> Then I checked the $PAPERSIZE and $PAPERCONF variables both of which
> appeared to not being set.  Using paperconf to interrogate the default
> setting I got this beauty:
>
> $ paperconf -d
> letter
>
> What the ...?!
>
> So, why is /etc/papersize being ignored?
>
> PS. I noticed my locale has LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8". Not sure if relevant,
> but thought of mentioning it just in case.


-- 
Regards,
Mick