Printing out To Do List in Kontact

[pat201]

I've fiddled with this until I'm tired of it..... I can't get my to do list to print out correctly from Kontact for anything. As far as I know, I've tried every possible combination I can come up with. I don't get the correct results going to my printer or printing to a PDF file. The printout doesn't adhere to the margins and I have to-do's that are cut off and missing..... like it prints all the way to the end of the page and when it jumps over to the next page, a couple of lines might be missing. I've tried it with duplex, with plain, flipping it long ways, flipping it short ways, etc, etc. I have a Brother HL-5250DN laser printer. I would think the easiest thing to do would be to print it to a PDF because there's no printer language getting in the way but that doesn't work either. Very similar results. I think I'm using 11.10 but it's late right now and I don't remember how to check my version number. I've tried this from my desktop and my netbook and they both behave similarly. I really like Kontact but I HAVE to be able to print out my to do list. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Pat

[woodsmoke]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Hi
And welcome to the forum!

I'm sorry i was looking at the wrong calendar I'll get back.

*****************

I keep forgetting to change from the akonadi calendar to the .ics calendar(where the to do is stored). I need to fix that.

I'm printing to an HP 1210 multi-funtion and it prints ok, everything is on one page, with a title at the top in a blue banner box and a calendar to the side.

I see that you are running a Brother, I used to run one of those a few years ago, GREAT PRINTER, but, it may be the driver that you are using is futzy with Kontact. There is "Gutenprint" and "Foomatic" "Cups" etc.

Im running "hpcups 3.11.7

However that doesn't help much with you.

You might go through the printer driver setup again and take a look at the particular driver, there will possibly be three for four, and report back and somebody who knows more about printer drivers might be able to help.

I am pretty confident that this can be fixed with a driver situation, if I don't pick the right one I can generate fifty sheets when one half sheet is what is supposed to print.


woodsmoke

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Thanks Woodsmoke. There are 5 different selections for my printer and I've tried them all. What I don't understand is when I've completely removed the printer driver and tried just to print to a PDF file, that doesn't work either. I also can't figure out where to change the defaults of whatever is outputting the PDF file. When I go to print options on my desktop, the default is letter but on my netbook it's A4 and I always have to change it. I can't figure out where to change those defaults. Either way, I keep changing settings in the print options and I can't get the PDF to look correct either which makes me think it's something Kontact is actually putting out. Oh BTW, I'm running 64 bit on my desktop and 32 bit on my netbook. If I was just printing 1 page I could live with it, but right now the to do list is 4-5 pages and it'll probably routinely be 15-20 pages..... I've got a LOT of stuff to do. Every night I go through and highlight what I intend to do the next day (that way I don't have to continually jack around with due dates when I *don't* get something done) and if I've got 15 pages, I may potentially be missing 15-30 things off my print-out. If I could get a decent PDF going, I could make do, even printing that out on one of my windows boxes until I could get my Brother driver worked out on the local machine.

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Something else I was curious about was whether or not themes or Oxygen or whatever had anything to do with the output. I'm tired right now and can't remember if the output changed when I changed the theme or not.

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Here's a copy of my PDF so you can see the spacing between page 1 and 2.....

[woodsmoke]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Hi
This won't necessarily be a response in the same order as your post.

I) as to the printout of your .pdf.

I see in your printout what I see in my printouts although mine are not nearly as complicated as yours!!

I think that, at this time you are just kind of stuck with the formatting. The reason for that is, I think, because it uses "Kate" as the "editor".

Kate is a very simple text editor that is used mainly for "changing scripty things in command line stuff".

It does not have must in the way of formatting capabilities.

I realize that .pdfs can be highly formatted but I think what is going on is that the to do function does not have much in the way of formatting except to produce the subheaded stuff as you have and also Kate doesn't format.

However given that:

One way to get it where you can format it is to copy and paste the text, however, since Kate does not have much formatting stuff in it to begin with what you get is probably not what you want.

Here is what I did to get the text out.

Click the .pdf to open it in Okular(the standard way to view .pdfs)

To the top right of Okular you will see a button names "selection".

Click it and then go to the bottom right of your pdf text and place the pointer below and to the right.

Left mouse click, hold, and Drag up and to the left and you will see a blue box forming.

i stopped without including the title to do.

When you are the top left and have to corner positioned the way you want you then release the mouse and you will see a notfication box about whether you want to copy to the clipboard or to file for both "text" and an "image". Pick the text.

You can then go to a word processor and paste and the text will be in it.

However, here is what I got as a paste, which I don't think you want.

Priority
Title
Complete 0%
1211
Amy & Lori's Room
0%
Measure for new twin beds - figure out what to do with king size bed
0%
Repair light kit or install new ceiling fan
0%
Bathroom D
0%
Bend pin in hinge to make door stay open
0%
Clean tops of molding
0%
Scrub side of cabinet and get rid of mildew
0%
Bathroom Hall
0%
Cave
0%

To me, at least, that seems to be less useful than the original subheaded text, but you may be able to use it, I don't know.

As you can see there is no formatting.

But to get back to the .pdf.

I don't think that you have "lost information" going from one page to the other.

To put it into perspective, I have run into that kind of thing in other applications in previous years and until someone addresses it you are kind of stuck with it I think.

The devs are working VERY hard on KDE PIM. There have been hundreds of updates just this last couple of months but their normal method of working is to "get the basic function straight" and then go to the "extras" like formatting.

It is, I'm sorry to say, a function of the number of hands on the problem. There just are not enough people.

So....

a) I will file, not a bug report, but a request at the bug reporting place to see if they can move formatting up on the list of things to get done.

b) if formatting is a real thing, thing then you might want to consider maybe Thunderbird or something, although i have not used them.



II ) as to where it saves. A lot of stuff for KDE has scant instruction sets. And this is one of those cases. There is no "documentation" per-se, except in the alphabetical part of the documentation and there is nothing in there that I could find about where a document saves or how to change that.

The default for a lot of stuff in Linux in general is in "documents", unless one downloads and then it is in downloads. Some imaging programs actually look for "pictures".

However, in this case, the print to pdf on the third popup box where one actually sees the printers available provides only one location and that is documents.

HOWEVER, there is a little button next to it with three dots on it and the three dots is symbolic of "the file system" in Linuxdom If you click that button you will see the documents folder interior and at the top right is folder with a "plus" + sign on it, that is the function for making a new folder.

I made a folder called "to dos" and put it in documents and was able to save in it.

I normally just save in documents.

HOWEVER, there is no option on the "print box" to use that as the future default action.

Sooooooo that means that you would have to change it in some kind of global setting, which I'm sure you don't want to do because then everything would save to that folder.

There may be some way in a script to change the default location, but that is quite beyond my capabilites, so maybe someone else can help with that if you really need to have it.

So...you are kind of stuck with making a new folder and navigating to it.

If you want to make the folder outside of documents then....BEFORE you make the new folder click the "up arrow" to the top left of the save requestor box and you will see the normal folders in "home" and can go to one of them or make a new folder there.

Do not worry about making a new folder there messing anything up.

III) as to the print option for the paper, I have "letter". A4 is usually a "metric" or a "European" or "British" option. It may be there because you have chosen metric someplace, only I don't know where you would do that. It may be because you chose the "British keyboard" and Kubu figured you were in Britain, or you chose Britain as a time zone, which, if you are in Britain, you would, naturally have done.

You "should" be able to pick "media size" in printer options for letter and then click "apply" and it should set that as a default. If it will not do that then that also, is beyond my capabilities.

IV) but to get back to your concern about losing information in the page transitions, I really do NOT think that happens. Kate may be simple but it is effective at what it does.

Well, I'm sorry I couldn't help more, it may be that there is someone more knowledgable that will drop by, if there is anything else that my poor capabilities might be able to help with just ask.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

I filed a "bug report", actually a suggestion, at KDE bug reporter.

woodsmoke

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Thanks for the help Woodsmoke! I'm going to print this message out and go through all this stuff to see if I can find anything that makes a difference. I agree, I'm not actually "losing" data, there's just data that is "missing" on the printout so I can't see it.
With that stuff missing I have to work from the actual computer screen with the to do's in Kontact and I can't take a printout with me. I also write stuff down on my printout during the day and then key it into Kontact in the evening. Having a working printout is pretty much a necessity for me. I'll keep fiddling with it to see if I can find some way to get a complete printout.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Hi
Please let me get this correct.

There are "lines of stuff" on the computer screen that are MISSING between paper sheet one, where the text has
"run off" the page and the top of the "next page"?

You actually do not have "text" or "data" on either page one or two that IS on the screen?

If so that is a MAJOR problem, not "just a bug".

Please expand on what you said so that I can better understand your situation.

woodsmoke

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

That is correct. The program pays little attention to the margins I set and there is actually data MISSING on the printout. Usually 2 or 3 lines between each page. The to-do's are in the list in Kontact but they run off the page in the printout and then where it picks back up on the next page, it is not where it leaves off above..... there are actually missing items. This happens no matter what I've tried printing out to my Brother laser printer whether it's in duplex mode or just printing on the front of the paper and it does the same thing printing to PDF mode. It behaves exactly the same on my desktop machine running 64-bit and on my netbook running 32-bit although I'm not sure all versions of everything are the same otherwise between the two computers. I'm pretty sure I'm running 11.10 with everything updated on both of them. That's what confuses me.... I'm not concerned about the actual formatting the developers are outputting to the paper, I like how it looks. But the data is overrunning the margins and some is getting lost from one page to the next. I've tried it with and without the connecting lines between sub-tasks, I've tried it sorted every whichaway, I think I've tried it with every possible combination of available fields on and off...... same thing every time. The only thing I haven't tried (HEY BRAINSTORM) is with another Brother multifunction printer I have or with an old HP deskjet I've got. I bet I'll get different results with that deskjet..... I'll try to give that a shot tomorrow evening and report back the results.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Hi pat, thanks for that very important information.

I await your results, and pending them may, or may not, post what seems to be a MAJOR bug.

woodsmoke

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Well, I tried it tonight with an HP Deskjet 5440..... it appears even WORSE! Instead of losing 3 or 4 lines between pages, I might lose 15 or 20 items between pages..... but at SOME page breaks, it transitioned fine! LOL Ya got me brother.... I didn't uninstall my old printer and I just let Kubuntu find the new printer (the HP) so I didn't tweak anything, but I tried all kinds of stuff and never could pin down anything. If I try the print settings the same way, it does it prints the same way every time, but if I change stuff around, the results are completely random. Meaning, it seems the printer is printing exactly what it's being told, not just random results, but when I change settings, I can't pin the output results to any one setting. Something that *does* seem to have an effect is whether or not you have a title in there.... it's almost like the title bar on the first page with the calendar embedded is jacking something up and it throw it off from there. But when some pages transition fine, it's hard for me to understand how that could be causing it. I also thought perhaps the items with descriptions might be causing some type of field problems, so I took out all the descriptions on every item that had a description..... no change. I dunno, really weird. It'd be nice if someone with a whopping to do list would weigh in that was perhaps on 32 bit or an older version or something else and see if they were having print problems. I'm a total newb to Linux so it could entirely be some random setting I've got jacked up somewhere. I worked with computers a long time and was an enterprise level WAN administrator when I gave it up so I know how one setting somewhere can cause problems and I'm not one to wave the "bug" flag too quick. Just in typing this it gave me a couple ideas to try with the different printer..... I'll keep fiddling with it. I see you in a LOT of the threads offering help to folks. I appreciate the time you and a lot of others invest in helping folks out here! Take care.

Pat

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Ok, starting to think it definitely has something to do with the description field.... Found out I was not thorough.... when I took out all my descriptions I didn't have everything fully exposed and left a few in. I thought for kicks I'd just uncheck descriptions in the print dialog and when I did that, it would only print the first page of my printout. When I re-checked the descriptions button, it would print the whole thing again but like before it was missing records between the first and second pages. With it transitioning correctly between some pages, maybe that's where I had a record with a description in it. So I'm going to triple check to make sure ALL descriptions are gone, switch back to the Brother laser printer (because I've run out of ink in the Deskjet > ) and keep on truckin'.....

[woodsmoke]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Hi
I have read your posts thoroughly.

Unfortunately I am in the middle of ramping up new lectures for the next semester so I waited for you come back.

I will now "make up" a long to do list and run it on my HP 1210 multifuntion to check for the same kind of problems.

woodsmoke

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Ok, there's a bug *somewhere*..... For starters, Print Preview only works in certain areas. If I try to do a Print Preview of the "master list" it never previews. It only goes straight to the print dialogue and prints a hard copy.

The worst thing that I *just* found and scariest to me... I made sure all to-do's were expanded so I could get rid of all descriptions. After having no better results with all the descriptions gone, I was going back and closing up the list one sub category at a time and when I closed one, it checked off the master category as done! I did it several times and the same thing every time. If I uncheck the master category as not done, it puts it back in the sort order where it was, but I could see some potential for losing some items here.

The first thing I would suggest whomever's handling the print function look at is margin control. No matter WHAT I've tried, that bottom margin is all over the place. I don't know if it's a page length thing, a margin thing or what.... it could be as simple as making sure they're doing the old "66 line" deal or whatever. And because the "print to PDF" function doesn't work for me either, I'm guessing there's something internal that has nothing to do with what printer you're using. That's my problem, I don't know enough about Linux to know if it's a Kontact problem, a printer problem, a PDF writer program problem or some setting internal to Linux I don't know about that's causing the problem. Kontact's a great program and I really like it but not being able to print out a reliable to-do list is a pretty big problem for me. I'll stay with it though and if you can bounce anything off me to try, let me know.

As for "feature list", if they'd add the ability to embed images or at least thumbnails to external pictures to the Notebook feature I'd be in hog heaven. Actually, IIRC the Notebook feature was an add-in. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you come up with your larger list and your printer.

Pat