(LibreOffice Writer & Calc) Prints Blank Page in Lubuntu 20.04 Using Epson M100
Solution 1:
There is a known issue in LibreOffice due to an bug in the Qt5 toolkit used by the LTS release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS [5.12.8]. It only impacted Qt5 users (ie. Lubuntu using LXQt & Kubuntu using KDE).
It is documented in the Lubuntu 20.04 release notes, see
- known issues in https://lubuntu.me/focal-2-released/
or on LibreOffice questions, see
- https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/242188/cannot-print-anything-exporting-to-pdf-produces-blank-pdf-lubuntu-2004/
The Qt5 toolkit used in 20.04 is the LTS version (5.12) and the issue doesn't exist in later releases.
You can install a snap version (which will use later libraries packaged within the snap), remove Qt5 libs and use GTK3 ones (as used by main Ubuntu and other flavors), or use the work around provided at the Lubuntu site; see
- https://discourse.lubuntu.me/t/libreoffice-printing-issues/1623
ie.
The solution is to go to Preferences-LXQt settings-Session settings - Environment variables - Environment (advanced) - then add the following 2 variables if they are missing -
SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN qt5 SAL_VCL_QT5_USE_CAIRO true
Solution 2:
tl:dr: try a different font type
I have this same issue running KDE Plasma.
As @guiverc insightfully mentioned:
It is documented in the Lubuntu 20.04 release notes, see
- known issues in https://lubuntu.me/focal-2-released/
When I visited the known issues link, more details are provided. To quote directly from that page:
LibreOffice Exporting Documents as a PDF
There is a bug where certain fonts do not render in exported PDF documents. As a workaround, LibreOffice applications can be launched from the commandline with the following environment variable SAL_VCL_QT5_USE_CAIRO=true. For example, to launch writer issue SAL_VCL_QT5_USE_CAIRO=true libreoffice –writer.
To emphasize in the first sentence there, it explains that the issue is with "certain fonts". In my case, I was using "Cantarell". I changed the font type to "Hack" and presto! My Libreoffice Writer and my HP printer started printing properly. The pages are no longer blank and the content is printing as expected.