Re: VERY slow printing

On Tue, 2017-02-28 at 10:06 -0800, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote: As a general point, unless your printer is able to directly print from a PDF file transmitted to it, that PDF may be decoded and sent as a large graphic image (there may be some optimisation of data for blank space, and large areas of common colours, conversion into a optimised printer language specific to your printer, etc). But the original file size of the PDF is no real clue as to how huge the graphic dump of it will be. Additionally, some PDFs are really complex. The same can be said for web pages. You might look at it as a 30 kB HTML document, with a few 100 kB JPEGs. But when rendered to the screen, a 1280 pixel x 1080 pixel x 16 bits screen = 22,118,400 bits, or 2.7 MB. And that's just one screen-full, never mind if the page is many screens high, or a greater bit-depth. So there can be a surprising expansion of memory use. Rendering for printing will be even higher, as many printers have as many dots per inch on the page, as the monitor has across the entire screen. So, either in the computer or the printer, that's a lot of data to render and send. So, to be sure about printing speed, you'd need a test with known characteristics. If a plain text file is slow to print, or even a simple word processor page, that doesn't bode well. Though, I am surprised by the length of time you mentioned. But, for any useful help from other people. You should say what model printer you're using, which drivers, and how is the printer connected (parallel, USB, ethernet, wireless...). Parallel ports can be slow, especially in some modes of their configuration. Even USB 1 can be painful on some equipment. -- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64 Boilerplate: All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point trying to privately email me, I only get to see the messages posted to the mailing list. Damn, I didn't mean to press *that* button!