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I have the problem that printing normal pages from Firefox on Linux results in very erratic letter spacing within words. I've attached an image of a print preview on a Google result page. For instance, the last "s" of "Discussions" on the left is just way off. The "or" of "More" runs into each other. It seems to be independent of the setting of Firefox or what printer is used.

Any hints?

I tried it with the latest unstable version of Chrome - the result is better, but not perfect:

enter image description here

I think it's more of a GTK or X.org problem. By the way, I'm not complaining, screen to print conversion is a hard problem in the given environment. I just wanted to know if anyone has a good solution.

Update: Same problem seems to be here on Ubuntu. I switched off kerning/hinting, but it didn't change anything. On the other hand, maybe this initialized during FF start.

enter image description here

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I'm using fedora 12 – vasquez Jul 13 '10 at 14:12
Does the kerning problem on the actual printed page match the print preview? – Dennis Williamson Jul 13 '10 at 14:25
Dennis, yes, it matches it exactly. – vasquez Jul 14 '10 at 11:25
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

It looks like a font problem. If X doesn't have the font that is requested for printing, it will use a different font with different spacing. Check that you have the appropriate font(s) available.

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I have a lot of fonts installed, esp the liberations fonts that are supposed to replace the Microsoft fonts. If I disable the fonts style with Firebug on the Google results page, the run-ins aren't that bad anymore (it switched to a different font). Same for an apache index page. – vasquez Jul 14 '10 at 14:52
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up vote 0 down vote

I've had this issue in the past when software was scaling the page to fit, causing some of the letters to bunch together. It was scaling down only 1 or 2 percent, so it was hard to notice on the printed copy.

Is it just the print preview, or does the actual printed page have the incorrect letter spacing? It's possible the zoom setting on the print preview causes the weird letter spacing and a printed copy would look correct.

What if you printed as a PDF file - do you get the same results?

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I tested the various scaling settings, but it doesn't help the problem. I was hoping the "100%" setting would help but nothing. It's not only the preview, it's also on the actual printed copy. The printed copy and preview are very close. It's the same with "Print to PDF" (extension) or "Print to File" (printer dialog) – vasquez Jul 14 '10 at 11:32
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up vote 0 down vote accepted

Sadly, it's an open bug in Firefox: Bugzilla Thanks for your efforts.

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