pdftopdf produces blank document when using -o fit-to-page from apparently correct input

[maganap]

Describe the bug I'm using cupsfilter to transform PDF files to PostScript before sending to the printer. Some files print completely blank, with the correct number of pages, though. I noticed the problem is produced only when adding the -o fit-to-page option. If I skip this option, the file prints out properly.

I use evince to view the PS files before printing, which do show blank as well (or properly when -o fit-to-page is omitted).

This only happens to some files, but I can't find any errors in the input files. I also tried to repair the input file (with gs) before using cupsfilter, with the same blank result. pdfinfo and other tools I used didn't show any errors either.

To Reproduce I narrowed it down to this:

# works.pdf produces correct output
cupsfilter -m application/vnd.cups-pdf -o fit-to-page -- works.pdf > works_out.pdf

# fails.pdf produces blank output
cupsfilter -m application/vnd.cups-pdf -o fit-to-page -- fails.pdf > fails_out.pdf

Here you have works.pdf and fails.pdf for this test. Also my works_out.pdf and fails_out.pdf in case it's useful.

Expected behavior The output PDF should look similar to the input PDF.

System Information:

• Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
• CUPS 2.3.3op2-3+deb11u1
• QPDF 10.1.0

Extra information

• From https://www.cups.org/doc/options.html you can read on fit-to-page:

  This feature depends upon an accurate size in the print file. If no size is given in the file, the page may be scaled incorrectly!

But I could't find any wrong page size (like 0 page size to become blank) with pdfinfo.

• I also tried qpdf with --flatten-annotations and the output seems fine.

Your help is very much appreciated. Thank you in advance!

[maganap]

Any ideas here? Please :( this is causing a lot of trouble to us. Thanks