PDF's Very Slow to Print

[jeepfreak2002]

I just installed Ubuntu 8.10 64bit on a Core 2 Duo, 2 Gig RAM, 250 Gig SATA, Shuttle Mini PC.

PDF's are taking forever to print to a Lexmark Laser printer on a Linksys Print Server. Other doc's ( or .odt's, I should say) or web pages from firefox print fine, but these PDF's are killing me.

I am using the standard document PDF viewer that is standard, and I think that Adobe's "Reader" solved the prob for me before, but they do not support the 64bit OS, so I am stuck with the standard PDF viewer.

Any Ideas????

[cmnorton]

How have you defined the printer in Ubuntu?

Have you tried printing PDFs to another printer?

This could be the Lexmark drivers.

[Bladeforger]

Try epdfviewer. It's the light version of Evince, and I have the same issue.

You can read my comments at this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1068935

If you want, you can also experiment with the lpr command in bash. That didn't work for me, but it might be a function of how much memory is available or something.

Also, and you probably do this anyway... count pages. I've had epdfviewer and the lpr command both come up short on pages. Happens. With epdfviewer, you use the job tab and begin with the page after the one that printed last. epdfviewer doesn't short me on pages often enough to be too much of a pain.

Adobe, by contrast, always prints each page--all the way through--but life is too frantic sometimes to wait 1-2 minutes per page. And adobe doesn't collate--even if the box is checked.

epdfviewer WILL collate, but it's more likely to run out of memory halfway through and the print job dies. I just do one after the other for multiple copies. THAT seems to be better on the memory for some reason.

Hope this helps you.

Keith

[scorchgeek]

What sort of stuff is in the PDF? Sometimes PDFs can simply print slowly, even if they are opened with Adobe Reader and Windows.

[Bladeforger]

And I was going to say, Jeepfreak, I drive one too--when I'm not riding the KLR.

[Bladeforger]

What sort of stuff is in the PDF? Sometimes PDFs can simply print slowly, even if they are opened with Adobe Reader and Windows.

For me, it's tax returns--form and numbers and all.

And, also, another thought... can't you run the 32 bit on a 64 bit machine? Seems like I read somewhere that you could and that there was better compatibility...

Keith

[era86]

What sort of stuff is in the PDF? Sometimes PDFs can simply print slowly, even if they are opened with Adobe Reader and Windows.

This is very true. May not be an Ubuntu problem at all... Where I work, PDFs print deathly slow.

[jeepfreak2002]

alas, I still suffer from slow PDF printing.

I am now using 32bit Jaunty, and it is still deathly slow to print PDF's.

I am printing to Lexmark T642's which are on Linksys print servers. They are set up as LPD printers to the correct IP address. It seems that the print servers may have something to do with it, as my printing at home is fine. Any experience improving the performance of print servers?

Documents and web pages print fine, just PDF's are slow.

jeepfreak

[bkann]

I am having what sounds like the same problem. It takes as much as 15 minutes in between pages when I print PDFs to a networked Xerox N17 laser from 9.10.

While I don't have a solution for this, it does remind me of a Windows fix I encountered once. My network users were having this exact same "slowness" problem printing PDFs from Windows. In Acrobat, I found an option under File > Print > Advanced to "Print as Image." As long as that was checked, the print jobs were speedy and we did not run into any memory issues.

Is it possibly a similar issue in Ubuntu? If so, I have not found any comparable option to print as an image. In lieu of a real fix, I've been printing PDFs from a virtualized Windows installation, which can be a pain but at least it prints fast.

Thanks for any help!

[gsocker]

"Print As Image" should be possible; however it would require the appropriate magic incantations to CUPS,ghostscript, and the printer driver - probably more trouble than it is worth.
The reason the defaults are so slow with a laser:
Most inkjets, with the exception of a few high-end HPs, basically get "spray this color ink at this position".
Lasers, however, usually get "Print this shape at this position(may be defined elsewhere) using this font/line style/color..."
The result of this is that the laser has to generate the image itself. It also needs enough memory to hold the page image, as well as all the print data needed for at least a single page, plus any memory required by the RIP(Raster Image Processor) software to generate the image.
Postscript is an actual programming language, and can actually be used to write programs as well as produce printouts.
If it's slow, probably the document is complex enough the printer is having trouble with it - I one saw a PDF college map take 3 minutes for 1 page on my HP.
You might try lowering the resolution, or if possible, creating a printer entry using PCL instead of Postscript(if supported by the printer). PCL should result in the computer doing most of the processing, instead of the printer.