Bug#1109769: Print Preview Missing in GTK Print Dialog on Kali Linux after Installing Evince

[Simon McVittie]

Control: reassign -1 src:gtk+3.0
Control: affects -1 + evince gedit
Control: tags -1 + moreinfo unreproducible

On Thu, 24 Jul 2025 at 14:25:38 +0500, Abrar Nasir Jaffari wrote:
>Reproduction Steps:
>
>  • ISO Used:
>    kali-linux-2024.2-installer-amd64.iso
>    Downloaded from official Kali downloads

This is still not Debian, and bugs.debian.org is still not a support 
channel for Kali Linux.

Please try to reproduce whatever issue you are reporting on a *Debian* 
system (Kali is not Debian, it is a Debian derivative with 
modifications). A "live" image like the ones in 
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/ 
written to a USB stick or optical media might be a useful way to do this 
without overwriting any existing OS, but as a cybersecurity enthusiast 
and CEO, hopefully you have some expendable test computers available 
anyway and easily can do a Debian trixie installation.

If the issue is reproducible, please describe how to reproduce it 
(including any additional packages that need to be installed or packages 
that need to be removed in order to reproduce it). Also please check the 
systemd Journal for any relevant log messages, and look for any output of 
the affected program(s) when run from a terminal.

 From the reproduction steps that were originally given:

>3. Open any GTK app with a print dialog (e.g. Gedit or Evince)
>4. Open the Print dialog — the “Print Preview” option is missing

It seems highly unlikely that this could be a bug in libgtk-4-bin, 
because libgtk-4-bin is not related to either evince or gedit. evince 
and gedit are still GTK 3 applications, and do not use GTK 4.

If you are reporting an application issue, and you are not 100% 
confident that it is caused by a specific component, please report it as 
a bug in one of the affected applications (ideally whichever one is the 
most "normal"). If the root cause turns out to be a library used by that 
application, Debian contributors can reassign it to the library; but if 
your guess about the affected component is wrong, as it seems to have 
been here, then your issue report will be missing important information 
like the application version that is affected.

I was unable to reproduce this problem on a relatively "clean" Debian 13 
installation (originally installed from the Debian trixie d-i rc2 
netinst and subsequently upgraded), with GNOME selected during 
installation. On this system, evince was preinstalled, and I installed 
gedit while attempting to reproduce the issue.

Steps that I followed:

- install from debian-trixie-DI-rc2-amd64-netinst.iso
- (upgrade various packages from trixie)

- run evince from gnome-terminal
- open a PDF document (I used
   /usr/share/doc/shared-mime-info/shared-mime-info-spec.pdf which is a
   convenient test document available on any Debian GNOME system)
- open the popover menu indicated by 3 horizontal lines
- click on the printer icon
- the print dialog's title bar looks like this:
   |[Cancel] Print [Preview] [Print]|
   with "Print" disabled (insensitive) because I have not configured any
   printers on the test system
- click on Preview
- a second window appears, with a simplified evince UI and a blue 
   "Print" button in its titlebar
- this looks successful; close both evince windows

- sudo apt install gedit
- run gedit from gnome-terminal
- leave the document blank
- open the popover menu indicated by 3 horizontal lines
- click on the printer icon
- the print dialog's title bar looks like this:
   |[Cancel] Print [Preview] [Print]|
   with "Print" disabled (insensitive) because I have not configured any
   printers on the test system
- click on Preview
- this time I get a print preview inline in the gedit window, showing a
   heading "File: Untitled Document 1    Page 1 of 1" on my otherwise
   blank document
- this also looks successful

Because I suspected that there might be an interaction with 
debian/patches/printing-Default-to-papers-previewer-and-fallback-to-evin.patch 
in Debian's GTK 3, I also tried installing the 'papers' package. 
With that package installed, gedit still works as expected on my test 
system, but evince does not; but the symptom I observe is not the same 
as in your screenshot (I get an enabled/sensitive Preview button, but it 
doesn't work) so I will report that issue separately to avoid confusion.

     smcv