Slow print spooling in Write since recent upgrade

adrian5750 · October 30, 2021, 7:55am

Currently running 7.2.2 .2 x64 on a Windows 10 pc

I have some single-page Write documents which I’ve been printing for years - they are A4 sheets that, when cut up, form inserts for jewellery-boxes - so basically each insert is a cell in a table.

These used (possibly pre 7.1) to print pretty-much instantly.
Now, they take up to a minute to spool (I can see them running very slowly in the print queue).

Other, plain text docs, seem to print immediately.
If I save the docs to pdf and print them (from Adobe), they print immediately.

When they finally print from Write, the first page is OK but there is also a second page printed that contains a single line of text with graphics characters interspersed with PU3443, 6779RR3 and other similar text.

Any idea what’s going on?
Thanks
Adrian

Hrbrgr · October 31, 2021, 4:39pm

Can you please upload a sample document with which the problem exists.
To upload, please edit your initial question.
Click on the three dots ( … ) below your question and use the upload icon in the question. Thank you.

And please provide information about the operating system and LibreOffice version. Thank you.

adrian5750 · October 31, 2021, 5:01pm

HI - Thanks for the reply!

OS is Windows 10 Home - V 21H1 - OS Build 19043.1288
LO Version 7.2.2.2 (x64)

Have attached one of the docs that shows this behaviour…

Thanks
Adrian
new large earring cards a4 fronts only.odt (15.5 KB)

Hrbrgr · October 31, 2021, 5:57pm

Via the File>Properties menu, I turned off the bordered options.

The printer now responds almost immediately.
In individual cases you would have to test which option is responsible for a slow process or which option you absolutely need.

new large earring cards a4 fronts only 02.odt (9,6 KB)

adrian5750 · October 31, 2021, 7:00pm

Thank you for that. I have made the amendments as suggested.
(I don’t recall ever having been into those panes before - are these new options?)

Unfortunately it makes no difference to the the problem on this PC, print-spooling still takes several minutes, (it’s impossible to delete the job while it is spooling) - and there is still the same extra page with the strange text on it…

Is there anything else I could try, please?
Thank you
Adrian

adrian5750 · October 31, 2021, 9:35pm

OK - on the offchance - I went into tools | options | view and unticked ‘Use Skia for all rendering’.

Suddenly - the document prints almost instantaneously…

A few weeks ago I had an issue with LibreOfficeCalc (after a recent update to, I think 7.1. - where no OpenOffice programs would run unless OO was openid in Safe mode.

The instruction at the time was to revert to an earlier version of LO, until 7.2 came out - and there was mention at the time of issues with Skia…

So - so far, deselecting ‘Use Skia’ seem to solve the problem.

Thanks
Adrian

Hrbrgr · November 1, 2021, 9:31am

…and there is still the same extra page with the strange text on it…

I could not find that in my case.

I took a closer look at the document and found that you are working with 4 columns in the document.
I tried to find another solution that also includes formatting with style sheets.
You can find the document here at the end.

I worked with frames, menu Insert>Frame>Frame.
The dimensions of the frames are 5.00 x 7.00 cm, which should roughly correspond to your dimensions.

Frame advantages:

You only have to create one frame at first and then you can copy it and paste it again as you like.
You can colour the frame border as you like, e.g. light grey, to have crop marks.

Advantages of writing with style sheets:

There are 4 paragraphs in each frame.
Place the cursor in a paragraph and you will see which paragraph style is assigned in the right sidebar under paragraph styles.
In the paragraph style sheet you can set the font, size, colour and the spacing up and down.
You don’t need unnecessary empty paragraphs.
If you want to make changes, you only need to change the paragraph style sheet.

This document should not be used to print another blank page.

new large earring cards a4 fronts only 03.odt (13,6 KB)

This could help you with further work with required formatting:

Professional text composition with Writer

adrian5750 · November 1, 2021, 10:20am

Hi
Thanks for taking all that trouble - appreciate it.

For the time being, it seems that deselecting ‘Use Skia’ seems to solve the problem

but I will certainly bear in mind alternative ways of achieveing the same layout in a rather more elegant fashion.

Many thanks
Adrian