[Scribus] Printing tabloid landscape to Laserjet 5SiMx - Help!

[John Jordan]

On 10 Mar 2006, at 23:29, Louis Desjardins wrote:

> Did you try the "stupid" trick : print in "portrait" mode... even
> though you want "landscape". If one doesn't work, maybe the other
> will. Sometimes strange things happen.

Good idea, and it almost worked! Except that now I realize that 
printing from Scribus is even more screwed up than I thought.

This printer has a manual feed tray, two 500-sheet trays (tray 2 and 
tray 3) and a 2000-sheet lower tray (tray 4). Tray 2 can handle only 
letter or A4. The other trays can handle any paper that this printer 
is designed for, including 11x17. Normally I print letter size, and if I 
need to print 11x17 I usually use the manual feed tray. However, 
the printer has various modes, one of which is "Auto." In Auto 
mode the printer will pull paper from the tray with the lowest 
number that has paper in it of the proper size for the print job. This 
can be kind of confusing and I screw up a lot, so I developed the 
habit a long time ago of leaving all trays ajar except the manual 
feed tray, if I am using the manual feed tray.

So when I first tried to print this job I used the manual feed tray. 
That's when it refused to print landscape. Applying your "stupid 
trick" I tried again in portrait, but by that time I had already removed 
the 11x17 from the manual feed tray and had pushed tray 2 back in 
(which has letter size in it). So when I went to try the "stupid trick" 
I decided just to go ahead and print it on letter size -- so what if it 
prints just part of the page? It would be enough to see if the "stupid 
trick" works. 

And it did! The page came out in landscape. 

So then I put the 11x17 back in the manual feed tray, opened tray 
2, and resent the print job. Alas, it still printed portrait. So this tells 
me that Scribus has the tray assignments screwed up. It thinks 
tray 1 (manual feed) is portrait and there is nothing that will 
convince it otherwise. For tray 2 it will accept software 
assignments.

So then I took the 11x17 paper out of the manual feed tray and put 
it in tray 3, leaving all other trays open. I resent the print job, 
hoping that maybe it would print ok to tray 3. But the print job did 
not come out, so I walked over and looked at the display. It was 
flashing that tray 1 was empty. In other words, Scribus lists all the 
trays this printer has, but it sends everything either to the manual 
feed tray or to tray 2. The other tray options do not work. However, 
I discovered that if I hit the Online button while it is flashing that the 
manual feed tray is empty it asks if I want to print on 11x17 
instead. If I tell it to go ahead it will then print from tray 3. 
Nevertheless, it came out portrait.

I also opened up System > Administration > Printers and tried to 
see if there were any settings in there. The only settings available 
were some that were already in Scribus' print dialog box options.

I also tried tray 4. Again, it insists that tray 1 (manal feed) is 
empty. And when I tell it to print on 11x17 instead it pulls it from 
tray 4, but the output is still portrait. The only tray it will print 
landscape from is tray 2, and that tray does not take larger sizes.

Man, this is hopelessly screwed up.

In the meantime, I exported as PDF and used PDF Viewer instead 
of Adobe Reader. That finally got me landscape, although most of 
the other CUPS options were not available. So the problem is in 
Scribus or in CUPS.