[GUACAMOLE-1129] Support direct print to PDF without intermediate PostScript

• Type: Wish
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Won't Do
• Component/s: RDP
• Environment: CentOS 7, Debian10, Docker
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Heiko Beisswenger
• Created: 08/Jul/20 09:21
• Updated: 04/Apr/23 19:47
• Resolved: 04/Apr/23 19:47

Description

I hope that this is the right place to ask for help on this issue.

I have tested this on guacamole version 1.2 installed natively on a CentOS 7.8 , on a CentOS 7.7 native installation with guacamole version 0.9.14 and on a docker setup on Debian Buster OS.
The results were on all setups identical.

I try to print from a windows 10 client connected via rdp session (pdf download).
Printing small documents like text only work without problems.
I get the pdf download as expected after a short period of time.

As soon as I try to print larger files with images in it, the resulting pdfs get very big or can't even be downloaded.

One document I've run tests on is a 628 pages pdf document with pictures and diagrams in it, which original size is 17MB.
I've printed the first 50 pages wich took about 10 minutes and the resulting pdf was 26MB big.
Printing the first 20 pages, results in a 10 MB pdf file takes about 4 minutes.
If I try to "print" more than 50 pages ghostscript works on 100% CPU but won't finish in a reasonable time period.

Then I took other documents, which one of our customers wanted to print. These are scanned documents with only 4-6 pages, only images. original size 2-4 MB.
The Windows 10 printqueue says that the resulting document will be 96MB big. But due to timeout issues it's not available to download at all.

I did little research and Microsoft says to change the printer settings to "Print directly to the printer".
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/919543/the-size-of-the-emf-spool-file-may-become-very-large-when-you-print-a

But It is not possible to change this setting in the guacamole-printer settings.
I've also tested against another Windows 10 system, same problem here.
The same tests were run on a Windows 7 system and this dos not show this behavior.

So this is a Windows 10 guacamole-printer issue.

Is there any configuration without altering the code that can be changed to make things work again ?

Thanks
Heiko