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Print Dialogue only prints 1 page irrespective of no of copies selected ...

Dear all,

Sorry for the repeat - had posted this in the Tiger support - not Leopard - hence the re-post.

Driving me nuts - annual print off of xmas cards for family and friends, all laid out in Pages and despite tweaking all various settings can only get a single sheet printed despite configuring the print dialogue (the worst print dialogue of any OS IMHO :-> ). Have subsequently tried multiple copies of PDFs from Preview, and docs from Pages, and to two separate printers (USB Canon Selphy photoprinter & Airport connected Samsung Laser) - all behaving the same, request many get one... Believe this to be an OSX print dialogue related problem, have reinstalled both printer drivers to no avail. All worked fine last year!

Any ideas/help greatly appreciated! Show me that plist!

Ross.

MBP & MB, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Oct 19, 2008 3:46 PM

Reply
8 replies

Oct 20, 2008 12:51 PM in response to John Blanchard1

JB,

Ah the plot thickens - this may have done the trick, thank you. I say may have as I didn't think deleting the Plist had made any difference as post deletion I tried to print a 6x4 card from iWork Pages, same problem - however when I tried to print a PDF of same document via OSX Preview - voila multiple pages were sent by the dialogue to the print driver - printing 1 of 100...

Prior to deleting the plist as per your recommendation, I had reset the printing system, removed and reinstalled my print drivers, and run the 3rd party app Print Therapy 6.0.2, that goes to town on all print settings including my CUPS setup (and I believe deletes the relevant Plists), all with seemingly nil effect!

It was then, that in response to your question about my inference of a poor print dialogue, I wished to screen capture the variety different Print Dialogues that I see day to day Word/FileMaker/Preview, only to find that the Preview Dialogue would successfully print multiple copies of a PDF version of my problematic Pages document?! I had tried this (pdf print of) previous to all my resetting and reinstallations incidentally.

Perhaps the issue lays with Pages... Anway workaround found.

Thanks for your input JB.

For completeness and to assist others that may google this bad boy...

Mute point now but my printers, that had both worked seemlessly for at least 18 months previously (previous to what though?!) are:

1. Canon Selphy CP600 photo-card printer via USB with latest native Canon driver.

2. A Samsung Laser ML-1520 hanging off my Airport with a Foomatic/gdi printer driver (Installed GPL Ghostscript & native CUPS).

Print Dialogue Observations:

My criticism of the OSX Print Dialogue (mute calling it OSX Print Dialogue as every app seems to have it's own Print Dialog, there's the first issue) borne out in the above experience is that the core elements of printing, orientation, paper size etc should be visible, not hidden under presets or a separate page layout within the application - just too many button clicks and variables that can be inadvertantly set wrong as they are not visible. Dependant on 'where' you print from you understandably see an application specific dialogue - but imho the core elements should always be visible, OS not App controlled, and obvious not hidden under the several options within drop downs.

Too often I have printed a photo inadvertantly as a partial banner across the middle of a photo card rather than the correct orientation, and there is nothing in the GUI to assist in preventing this obvious gotcha. I would partially accept the argument that blame could lay with the printer (driver) manafacturer, however it should be the OSX GUI that drives the experience and sets the standard.

OSX Preview (as in native PDF app) Print Dialogue: they nearly got it right and it has the core elements visible (imo) - but the orientation is still not obvious in relation to the printer (head) itself unless you are printing to std A4 printer (important when printing the 'correct way' up onto the front of photo cards with a printed rear for instance). It is not intuitive - you still need a practice print run to realise the orientation, a minor annoyance when printing to a photo printer with no draft option.

Most of OSX is a joy and user oriented, however I am seasoned computer user and have managed to be bemused trying to replicating a very very simple printing workflow (settings issues aside). Given the vast range and sizes of printers and mediums to print to available, a consistent dialogue with clear graphical relationship of paper to printer (head) would be a vast improvement.

Notes to self.

1. get familiar with using Print Presets I guess?

2. If one print dialogue doesn't work, especially an iApp - fire up another application and try an alternative print dialogue!

Cheers

Oct 20, 2008 5:26 PM in response to rossnats

rossnats,

Perhaps the issue lays with Pages... Anway workaround found.

Happy to help, and I am surprised that the previous efforts, especially resetting the print system, didn't make a difference.

Print Dialogue Observations:

My criticism of the OSX Print Dialogue (mute calling it OSX Print Dialogue as every app seems to have it's own Print Dialog, there's the first issue) borne out in the above experience is that the core elements of printing, orientation, paper size etc should be visible, not hidden under presets or a separate page layout within the application - just too many button clicks and variables that can be inadvertantly set wrong as they are not visible. Dependant on 'where' you print from you understandably see an application specific dialogue - but imho the core elements should always be visible, OS not App controlled, and obvious not hidden under the several options within drop downs.


I agree that there should be an effort to make things a little more consistent. The approach that the Apple apps seem to have decided upon is to put the "core elements of printing, orientation, paper size" and orientation in the Page Setup Dialog if the application has one. If not, these elements are put in the top portion of the Print Dialog, but there shouldn't be a need to dig into any of the panels (PDEs) to get to these. It takes a little getting used to, especially when the behavior changes between apps.

OSX Preview (as in native PDF app) Print Dialogue: they nearly got it right and it has the core elements visible (imo) - but the orientation is still not obvious in relation to the printer (head) itself unless you are printing to std A4 printer (important when printing the 'correct way' up onto the front of photo cards with a printed rear for instance). It is not intuitive - you still need a practice print run to realise the orientation, a minor annoyance when printing to a photo printer with no draft option.


Perhaps you should submit this feedback to Apple. There should be consistent behavior between applications, but since this behavior appeared in Leopard, maybe Apple apps will change their behavior when the next system appear.

Oct 21, 2008 12:14 PM in response to John Blanchard1

JB,

Agree and certainly will feedback to Apple. Regarding my multiple print issue - I'll be dammned if I'm not back to square one again this evening?! This time directly printing a PDF from Preview - so all is still not well?!!

Have printed a single file to the Airport between the problem reoccuring with the direct USB printer so will follow that for diagnosis. Bizzare.

Also found that distinct differences in the Print Dialogue layout are evident (in PDF Preview at least) depending on user selection of File/Print ... or hitting the Print Icon .... now that is utterly confusing and pointless (or a fault and part of my problem)! Give it a go.

😟

Oct 22, 2008 12:03 PM in response to rossnats

Also found that distinct differences in the Print Dialogue layout are evident (in PDF Preview at least) depending on user selection of File/Print ... or hitting the Print Icon .... now that is utterly confusing and pointless (or a fault and part of my problem)! Give it a go.


What differences are you seeing between using the Print Icon in the toolbar and using File/Print? I tried it and didn't see any differences, but that could be traced back to your original problem.

On the account that is having problems, after trashing the com.apple.printing files in /<home>/Library/Preferences, you could also try throwing away the com.apple.printing files in /<home>/Library/Preferences/ByHost. There are caches there, one of which is a printingprefs file. I think that you'll have to re-add your printers, but this will get back to a clean printing system. (I don't think resetting the printing system deletes these ByHost files.)

Hope this helps.

Nov 9, 2008 3:10 PM in response to rossnats

Hi,

I'm having the same problem . . . either of my printers will only print one copy. I've deleted both printing preferences and the cache files. The only way to print multiple copies is to select "Printer Features" in the dialog and change the number of copies, but then it will always print that number regardless of the print dialog setting.
Rick.

Print Dialogue only prints 1 page irrespective of no of copies selected ...

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