Drracket prints definitions as blank pages

[Marcelli]

Using drracket 7.8 on Ubuntu 18.04.3.
File > Print definitions... > [print dialogue opens]
Pages come out of the printer completely blank.
If you print to pdf, same result: the pdf file is composed of entirely blank pages.
The same with any printer, virtual or real, network or local.
This happens only with drracket: my printers are working just fine with any other programs: IDE, office suites, pdf editors, web browsers etc.

[Metaxal]

I've had the same issue (surprisingly, the number of pages is correct!). I'm not sure how to solve this, but in the meantime there's a workaround with this quickscript.
It uses an old printer dialog, which explains why this one may work when the standard one fails.

[Marcelli]

Thanks for your prompt answer and your script, Metaxal! It works: it both prints to pdf and to a physical printer.

[cangiuli]

Three and a half years later, I'm experiencing the same exact issue with DrRacket 8.13 on Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS: the print dialogues produce completely blank documents with, strangely, the correct number of pages. (Metaxal's quickscript also works for me, FWIW.)

Is there some way I could help narrow down the problem?

[chihyang]

Three and a half years later, I'm experiencing the same exact issue with DrRacket 8.13 on Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS: the print dialogues produce completely blank documents with, strangely, the correct number of pages. (Metaxal's quickscript also works for me, FWIW.)

Is there some way I could help narrow down the problem?

I have the same problem with Racket 8.14. On Windows 10, DrRacket can print the current definitions once. After that, I have to close DrRacket and reopen the file to print it again. On Ubuntu 22.04, DrRacket prints out a file with only empty pages, but page number is incorrect. If I open the same file in gedit, it can be printed to PDF normally.

[capfredf]

per discussion with @chihyang, one could start from https://docs.racket-lang.org/gui/editor___.html#%28meth._%28%28%28lib._mred%2Fmain..rkt%29._editor~3c~25~3e%29._print%29%29 and try to make a minimal reproducer.

[chihyang]

It seems changing the following setting to #f fixes the problem. According to gtk3 documentation (https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/property.PrintOperation.allow-async.html), asynchronous mode is supported on Linux. But for some reason this doesn't work properly. Maybe the code for synchronization has some bug.

https://github.com/racket/gui/blob/03b7ffaab6ba1bd5b16907b95a1a0f12e9dd6135/gui-lib/mred/private/wx/gtk/printer-dc.rkt#L168