Driver Settings changing

[F.Stapenhorst]

Hi,

I have the color driver installed with 300 dpi, but every time I print with Excel the first time, the driver settings change to 600dpi. This occurs, because the default printer (some HP Laserjet) is defined with 600 dpi and is selected from Excel the first time, the print dialog opens. When you now select the color driver and click on "properties" the dpi settings are changed to 600 dpi.
When I change the the default printer also to 300 dpi., the settings are not changed.

I tested some other virtual drivers (like Adope pdf, etc) and there this problem does not occur. Is there a way to change this behavior?
Regards

F.S.

[noctufaber]

I have had the same trouble. The only way around this is to create your own installer that uses a special ini file that is read at install time, but I must admit I'm not too happy with the end result. I told the ini file to launch Internet Explorer with a specific URL and it doesn't appear to be working. I can look at the settings and I can see that they're correct, but it doesn't work. I wish there was a printer driver somewhere that basically says to windows "to heck with any prior settings. I'm not changing the DPI or anything else for that matter. The settings, are the settings, are the settings!!!!"

[F.Stapenhorst]

Hi,
I have an ini file with the default settings. I tested the default settings by creating a new user on the machine and checkung the printer settings with this new user. Every thing is ok and the default settings are applied. But again, when I start Excel or Wordpad the same problem occurres again.
The only application which does not change the settings is Word, as far as I tested...

The question still is: Why are other virtual printer drivers not changen in the dpi settings???

F.

[TechnicalSupportTeam]

Some printing applications, such as Excel, will store the DPI setting in the document itself, for example 600 DPI. When you select a printer which is set to a different DPI, such as 300, Excel will still try to print using the DPI setting stored in the document. If the selected printer driver supports the stored DPI, the stored DPI will be used instead of the selected printer's DPI setting. This is by Microsoft design because this way the printing application does not have to repaginate the document.

The problem with "noctufaber"'s suggestion of a printer which ignores the printing application's DPI setting and uses its own setting is that ignoring the printing application's DPI setting will cause irregularities in the printed document. For example, you have an Excel spreadsheet containing 50 cells across the top. If you print the document using the DPI value stored by Excel (600 DPI), the cells correctly fit across the length of the page. If instead, the printer driver ignores the printing applications DPI and uses its own DPI setting (300 DPI) the printing application will send the printjob to the printer paginated for 600 DPI, the driver will print it as 300 DPI and you will only get 25 cells across the top, since Excel will not have repaginated the file. This type of behavior would cause problems in legal documents which are referred to page by page and line by line and since the contents will be shifted if the document is not correctly paginated this will create a mess.

In order to ensure that the final file generated by the Black Ice printer drivers is using a specific DPI, you should use the "Force Printer DPI" setting of the Black Ice printer drivers. This setting allows you to specify a DPI to be used for the final generated image. The Force DPI setting will allow the printing application to print and generate the print job using the required DPI and will then modify the image to use the DPI setting that you need.

[noctufaber]

The main problem I have does appear to go away with the Force DPI setting burned into the default settings at install time. However there seems to be other problems.

For the tests below I set up an Epson receipt printer as my default printer which uses a very narrow paper width. I also have the Black Ice color printer driver installed on windows XP. All of the settings are visibly correct for the Black Ice printer driver.

Test #1:
1. Open Internet Explorer page to go to www.yahoo.com
2. Choose File > Print.
3. Select the Black Ice Printer and click Print.
4. Check the folder where the driver printed the files. I have two very narrow images showing just the extreme left hand side of Yahoo's site. The majority of the right hand side is cropped off. This is how it would have looked on paper if I had used the Epson receipt printer.

Test #2:
1. Open Internet Explorer and point it to www.yahoo.com
2. Choose File > Print.
3. Select the Black Ice Printer and Click Preferences.
4. Click the "Restore Defaults" button.
5. Click OK
6. Click Print.
7. Check the folder where the driver printed the files. I have two nicely formatted images showing Yahoo's page without any cropping.


Personally, I'm o.k. with having to take the extra three clicks to get the driver to do what I want it to do, but I know I'm going to have people calling me that use the printer driver that will not like having to take these extra steps, or they will forget to follow them and end up calling me to ask what is wrong.

Is there a way to turn off this behavior?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[TechnicalSupportTeam]

The Black Ice printer drivers support several paper sizes. Conforming to the Microsoft specifications, the printing application will initially format the document for printing based on the default printer's settings. When you change printers from inside the application, the application will try to use the settings the document has already been formatted with as long as the newly selected printer supports those parameters. This is normal behavior under Microsoft operating systems.

In order to workaround this issue you must use the Black ice printer as the default printer or set your default printer to use letter paper size by default. Also, if you are programmatically printing from some application you can programmatically change the default printer before launching Internet Explorer, perform the printing and then change the printer back to the previous default printer.