[21041] in Athena Bugs
Re: sun4 9.1.17: mozilla
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Fri Nov 8 13:01:00 2002
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 13:00:58 -0500 (EST)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: Eric Mumpower <nocturne@MIT.EDU>
cc: <bugs@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <200211080040.TAA19995@m56-129-11.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.33L.0211081255140.13054-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I know of the problem, but there is no good way to fix it.
In the Mozilla global settings, which are used to create your defaults, we
do set the print command to something a little saner (as I recall; it's
been a while since I made the change, but I do remember altering that
setting).
Unfortunately, if you were a Netscape 4.x user, as most of us were,
Mozilla will convert your 4.x settings, and one of those settings is the
print command. So my change to the global gets overridden by whatever the
user had in their 4.x prefs. No way to stop it that I know of, short of
blocking the 4.x conversion entirely, and that would cause far more
complaints than it would solve.
As a matter of fact, there are some who would actually consider this a
plus. For example, if you have deliberately chosen a particular printer in
your 4.x prefs, you'll probably want to keep that and not have it be
replaced by a more generic location when you run Mozilla the first time.
So I think we have to leave this as is. But I will try to make various
parties aware of it for advisory purposes.
- Todd Belton
On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Eric Mumpower wrote:
> System name: m56-129-11.mit.edu
> Type and version: Sun-Blade-100 9.1.17
> Display type: ifb
>
> Shell: /bin/athena/tcsh
> Window manager: /mit/windowmanagers/sun4bin/vtwm.gamma -f /mit/nocturne/dotfiles/vtwmrc
>
> What were you trying to do?
> Print to the default printer from Mozilla (i.e. whatever printer lpr
> defaults to for my current host)
>
> What's wrong:
> When I ran mozilla for the first time (just now), it imported the
> "Print Command" I most recently used in Netscape, which was "lpr -Ppindar2"
> (I suppose I had entered this because I wanted to print duplex in the m66
> cluster.)
>
> The fact that Netscape caches this value from session to session is okay,
> because the Print Command ("lpr -Ppindar2" in this case) is immediately
> visible in the "Print" dialogue.
>
> Mozilla, on the other hand, hides this setting under the "Properties" button
> of the print dialogue. The combination of this fact with the autoimporting
> of a setting the user may not have used recently will cause some users to be
> unable to figure out why Mozilla "isn't printing" (when in fact they're
> loading a now-distant printer with print jobs).
>
>
> A couple months ago I had a user come into the SIPB office with precisely
> this problem once; I was baffled as to why he had forgotten having set this
> value. The answer is -- he probably never set it himself in Mozilla -- it
> was automatically set for him during profile importation.
>
> Having had exactly this problem myself now, I see how it may have happened.
>
>
> What should have happened: [Please replace this line with your information.]
>
> This is a subtle issue, and perhaps not worth addressing. But it would
> eliminate some amount of confusion on the part of former Netscape users who
> are printing from Mozilla for the first time.
>
> Please describe any relevant documentation references:
>
>
