Printer problem

[wtb32141]

I have printed thousands of pages on an HP Laser Jet 1022. All worked fine until yesterday. Recently I bought and installed a new HP Color Laser Jet M277dw (an all-in-one printer with automatic duplex printing capability). The installation did not go smoothly, altho my version of HPLIP (3.16.7+repac amd64) exceeds the minimum (3.15.4) needed for that printer. I wound up with 4 entries in the printer list for that new printer. Even with the 4 entries, I got it to print, copy, and scan. I don’t need the fax feature. I even got the automatic duplex unit to work. I thought all was OK at that point.

Then yesterday I encountered a problem with the 1022 printer. I wanted to print a 3-page document with pages 1 and 2 on opposite sides of the same sheet of paper. It printed pages 1 and 3. Then when I reran the page containing page 1 so that page 2 would print on the other side of that sheet of paper, page 2 would not print. Something is amiss with Writer’s print dialog. It will not show the document’s first page; instead it begins by showing the document’s page 2. When I tell it to print page 2 (or page 3), the preview window on the left side of the print dialog goes gray, and the words “No pages” display in that window. When I tell it to print page 1, page 2 displays in the window. I don’t want to print page 1, but if I did, I suspect it would print page 2 (the page displayed in the window).

Have you any idea as to what is going on with Writer and the 1022 printer?

[wtb32141]

I found the problem. Writer’s print dialog box (the one in Kubuntu 16.10) has a bug. I first ran Kate and created a 2-page document. I printed page 1 only, and it worked perfectly. Then I printed page 2, and it worked perfectly.

Then I booted under Kubuntu 14.04, and I launched Writer. I opened the document that I was working on yesterday. I played around with the print dialog until I understood it perfectly, and I printed page 2 of the document that I could not get to print yesterday. Two items should agree with each other. They are (1) the General tab’s page items [All pages or a specific page number or range] and (2) the Page Layout tab’s Page Sides.

Then I rebooted under 16.10. If I (1) select the General tab and tell it to print page 2, and (2) select All Pages on the Page Layout tab, then page 2 will display in the dialog’s box’s window, and page 2 will print.

BUT if I then change the Page Layout tab’s Page Sides item to Left Pages, “No Pages” displays in the grayed-out window. That “No Pages” means “no pages will be printed.” And there is the bug I encountered yesterday! Page 2 is a left page (or even page); so it (1) should be displayed in the window and (2) it should print.

Those combinations work perfectly in Kubuntu 14.10’s version of Writer.