What is wrong with Printing and Linux?

[tinyflames]

I am trying to setup a printer on my computer that is running Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon 64 Bit.

My printer is a HP Photosmart 7520, Which is supported with the HPLIP drivers as a network printer, so it installs easy on my network.

When i try to print Documents (Docx, PDF, ODF...etc) It always cuts off the top and bottom of the page, and i still cannot figure out why. I have played with the settings in the printer driver relating with margins, tried different settings in the PDF viewer, Libreoffice...etc. but to no avail, it still cuts off the tops and bottoms of my documents. I have not tried to print any photos from my computer yet, (Don't really have to as i can print direct from my card or phone) and i don't really want to waste that much ink on tests to see of pictures are cut off on the edges.

This problem is a real pain for me cause print a lot of documents, and like i said i don't really want to test the pictures because that uses a lot of ink, but i want to be able to print pictures from my computer, because this printer prints exceptional pictures (why i bought this printer.)

I know that it is probably something stupid that i am overlooking, but if somebody could point me in the right direction it would be very helpful.

Just so that nobody has to ask;

Intel 1st gen quad Core i7, 64bit
6gb physical memory
500GB HDDx2
nvidia geforce GTX 285m w/ 1gb dedicated graphics memory.

Printer is HP Photosmart 7520 e all in one
Installed on computer through my WiFi Router, printer is linked to wireless network.

[cwsnyder]

Are you selecting the 8.5x11 source paper size, or do you select A4, which is slightly different? You may also want to change your margins to make sure the length of the page is not pushing the hardware limits of the printer. You never can print to the edges of the paper without having a tractor feed to handle the forms.

[ceolmer]

A very similar problem is stopping me switching to Mint from Fedora. I am using an HP Photosmart C310 directly linked to my PC via USB. When I print a document from LibreOffice under Mint the top of the first line of characters fails to print. Under Fedora the same document prints perfectly. I am using A4 paper and a top margin of half an inch, which is well within the printer's capabilities. I find Mint much more polished than Fedora but, because of the number of documents I print, I can't afford to switch until I've found a way of overcoming the problem.

[chris2kari]

Open a terminal & type "hp-doctor" as a regular user. This will analyse the printer subsystem & offer to repair (missing libraries etc). I've had to use it on every LM 16 Cinnamon installation I have. Hope this helps you.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[tinyflames]

I am using 8.5 x 11 inch paper standard. A4 is Metric and comes out to like 8.7" x 11.7". I have considered switching to another distro, as I am only experememting with Linux at this point, cause i don't want to buy another windows program.

But I will try the HP-Doctor thing first though.

[ceolmer]

When I try hp-doctor it gives me an error message saying LM 16 is not yet supported, which is surprising since chris2kari has used it successfully. However, I am using Xfce and not Cinnamon

[Mark Phelps]

ceolmer is correct: hp-doctor doesn't work on Mint 16 Cinnamon:

Code: Select all

hp-doctor
HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.13.9)
Self Diagnse Utility and Healing Utility ver. 1.0

Copyright (c) 2001-13 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

Checking for Deprecated items....
error: This distro (i.e linuxmint  16) is either deprecated or not yet supported.
The diagnosis is limited on unsupported platforms. Do you want to continue?(y=yes, n=no*):

[wheeledgoat]

Code: Select all

hp-setup

worked for me in 16 w/ KDE... but I only have an all-in-one w/ scanner & printing. not trying photo stuff.

[wiggy25]

So I'm not the only one then!!

I'm using Mint 15 Cinamon and they same thing happens.
I select Print to A4 and make sure all settings are correct, but the top and bottom of the printed pages is missed off.

I'm also using a HP Photosmart Premium C310a

Also installed the HPLip software as well.
The only way I can get an A4 page to print correctly is to use "Borderless A4" in the page setup.

Very strange a solution would be nice, it has worked OK on earlier versions of Mint.

Cheers

Ian

[DrHu]

It's the page settings has to match the size of paper in the printer, no matter what a preview shows..
https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/v ... f=6&t=6397
http://www.indigorose.com/forums/archiv ... 13334.html

• Corey
  10-12-2005, 06:50 AM
  I think the ISO standard for A4 is 210mm X 297mm (8.27 in. 11.69 in.):
  http://www.paper-paper.com/A4-1.html
  That's the main thing regardless of pixel resolution, is that it must print at "8.27 in. 11.69 in." to be A4. :yes

--so you can see that an A4 paper size is a bit less than a USA letter size, hence the proper selection (and a cut-off in printing)

Not a printing problem
Paper size is not going to be the same as image size (on the screen)

Also I am not sure if I read you setup correctly, you do use the page settings of usa letter (8.5 x 11), and that is the setting for any document you print
--and should be the default page setting to use, or it will be switching to whatever is the default during the setup of the application
There is also a default papersize setting for the OS
https://taufanlubis.wordpress.com/2007/ ... papersize/

[wiggy25]

Well thats not happening in my case.

The pdf document needs to be printed out on to A4 (210x297mm)
If I print out the document set at this size the whole page is lifted up by about 3mm, this means the top part of the page is not printed at all.

Now in the page setup toolbox I can select "A4 Borderless 297mm x 210mm" but the image of the paper shows 301.9mm x 215.5mm
When I select A4 Borderless the image prints correctly and the top part of the page is not missed out.

It looks to me that when normal A4 is selected the page is printed 3mm nearer the top, this makes anything requiring printing to be too close to and probably dropping into the top margin so it just doesn't get printed out.

Cheers

Ian

[Loopzilla]

I recently had a similar issue (with windows) that had me going for a while.

The pdf application was set to choose paper size by original pdf size, ie because the original document was A3, whatever I set my printer to, it still TRIED to print on a different paper size, so part was missing.

Maybe you have something similar going on with your setup...?

[MsToxic]

This thread is old but I found a solution.

Open your document and select "file" select "print..." select your printer and click "page setup" go to paper size and scroll down to "manage custom sizes" click "+" and modify paper margins like this:

Paper size
Width: 8.50
Height: 11.00

Paper margins
Top: 0.10
Bottom: 0.10
Left: 0.10
Right: 0.10

Close the windows and go to file again and select "print..." select your printer and click "page setup" go to paper size and select your custom size where you modified paper margins and print your document.

Make sure you follow these steps and choose your custom size before printing a document every time. I don't know how to set my custom size as default. If you know how to do it, let me know.

FYI, I'm using Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon

[DeMus]

I am trying to setup a printer on my computer that is running Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon 64 Bit.

It is probably not the cause of your problems but you do realize Mint 16 is no longer supported anymore, don't you?
To be safe and to have newer possibilities why don't you upgrade to at least 17.3, but 18 runs fine as well. (so I read here)

[duindain]

Using Mint 18.3
HP Photosmart C7200

The fix was in Printers
Right click preferences on your printer
Select Job options

Check Scale to fit

This fixed the top and bottom rows getting removed when printing for me

[mf-linux]

Thank you very much, duindain!
This problem was turning me mad for a long time.
I'm also running Mint 18.3, but I suppose the issue has nothing to do with the linux OS but with the CUPS printer configuration options (command "system-config-printer"). As duindain indicated, all you have to do is go to Menu - search for "printer" and click on it - right click on the problematic printer - select Preferences (or Properties, depending on translation) - go to Job options - in Common options, check Scale to fit.
The issue has been resolved for me, so I must add SOLVED to the subject title, if I have understood well the forum rules ("READ: How To Get Help!").
Thanks again.