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How to have print box close automatically?

I set-up my Canon MP640 printer such that after the last document printed, the progress window / type of dialog box quit automatically. Now with Mountain Lion it stays open and I cannot remember how I set this up to close automatically. Also the print progress looks different than with SL and Lion - just 2 items along the top--

--I looked for a ML Driver for the MP640 but didn't find one-- is there an updated one?

This is just a 2 year old printer and it runs great-- but would like to have the print status (what is the correct term for the box that opens with the print progress?) close automatically like before.

Thanks for any comments.

Steve

Monday 30 July 2012

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion, Also a Mac SE running 6.0.4 - not upgrading that!

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 1:29 AM

Best reply

PAHU

Level 6

16,705 points

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 2:00 AM

Hello again Steve. The window you are referring to is known as the printer proxy. As you have seen, the view in 10.8 is different to previous versions and the auto quit setting, which was under the printer proxy preferences, is no longer present. Now the proxy is set to auto quit automatically, but you and some others are finding out that this is not always the case.

There was a beta build of 10.8 that had this exact symptom but this was fixed before the final release version of 10.8. If you have upgraded from 10.7 to 10.8 then I think that there is a preference file that is the cause, and it is not part of the core printing system as a reset does not resolve it.

I'm using the iPad at the moment but will check later for possible causes. So I will get back to you later unless someone else provides an solution in the meantime.

View in context

40 replies

Aug 1, 2012 7:36 PM in response to PAHU

PAHU wrote:

But then I also thought that if this was the case then the proxy window should not be visible on the desktop. Anyway, I think your action of using the Activity Monitor is a better test.

Doh!! All this, and I totally missed the first sentence of the original post about the progress window being open. Actually, I have had that issue at least in Lion also. My experience, however, has been that the progress window never opened until I clicked on the Dock icon. Then everything would remain open until I closed the progress window. Then and only then would the progress window and the Dock icon go away.

Checking back to 10.6.8, 10.5.8, and 10.4.11 and I get the exact same thing. I have to click on the Dock icon to open the progress window. Then everything remains showing until I close the progress window.

Just to double check, the progress window is automatically opening when you start a print job along with the printer proxy appearing in the Dock?

Aug 2, 2012 4:26 AM in response to Matt Broughton

Pahu, Matt, John---

Thanks for all this feedback. Some is going over my head a bit, but basically don't have time to spend a lot of time on this right now---

BUT I can say that the "proxy" dialog box stays open. It is visible when I cmd-tab to it, it shows up in DragThing (how can anyone use a Mac without DragThing??), and it shows the blue glow in the Dock. It does not close automatically.

It did close automatically in SL and Lion and I believe in the other systems as well, but I've only had this printer MB640 since May 2010.

I really would like to understand why it won't close automatiocall and then try to get it to close automatically.

Thanks and I'll keep working on this from my end when I can-- until resolved! Should someone contact Canon?

Best regards,

Steve Schulte

Thursday 2 August 2012

jorhh

Level 1

43 points

Aug 2, 2012 5:22 AM in response to Stephen Schulte1

We seem to be discussing the same issue here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4139543?tstart=0

Apple - please fix this.

Aug 2, 2012 8:28 AM in response to Stephen Schulte1

Stephen Schulte1 wrote:

BUT I can say that the "proxy" dialog box stays open. It is visible when I cmd-tab to it, it shows up in DragThing (how can anyone use a Mac without DragThing??), and it shows the blue glow in the Dock. It does not close automatically.

Cmd-tabbing to the proxy is considered "interacting" with the proxy application, so it will stay open. Whether Cmd-tabbing is sufficient to be considered "interacting" is another question. Perhaps send feedback to Apple on this, but the proxy staying open is expected in this case.

Aug 2, 2012 8:40 AM in response to John Blanchard1

John and everyone,

Let me make this perfectly clear: When I do NOTHING the proxy stays open. For 2 years I have had auto-quit, first with Snow Leopard, then with Lion. THIS IS DIFFERENT, believe me.

When I do nothing at all the proxy still does NOT auto-quit. I know that even in Lion or SL if I actively go to the proxy then YES it does stay open (as it should).

But with ML - when I do NOTHING it stays open. It has been open most of the day and even if I manually close (quit) it - as soon as I print one thing - it opens, does NOT auto-quit and STAYS OPEN.

I hope that clears this up -- something is different and whether ML is supposed to work like this (WHY?) - I don't know-- but I do know that Apple sometimes has some weird ideas, for example: The color sidebars are GONE in LION and ML for Finder, iTunes and iPhoto and no one on the planet would consider that a step forward, but Apple did it. Lion Tweaks worked in the Finder for LION but not for ML. The iOS is among the most colorful interface in the world; and we have retina screens yet ML has gone uniformly horribly gray -- can't find anything in the sidebar anymore-- don't mean to be ranting but having seen so much progress since 1989 and now to see the new B&W look… a bit sad.

Steve

Thursday 2 August 2012

Aug 2, 2012 8:47 AM in response to Stephen Schulte1

Steve,

I realize there's a legitimate issue, and we're trying to find a solution. You mentioned cmd-tab in your post, and I commented specifically on that in csae that's relevant to others having this issue.

john

Aug 2, 2012 9:06 AM in response to John Blanchard1

Apologies, John - should have re-read that reply before hitting "send" - a bit too emphatic and sorry about that. I so appreciate the work that you, Pahu and others are doing here.

I guess I'm also a bit upset that Apple is "rigidizing" (is that a word) things so much. Sure, even in 6.0.4 there were standards and had to be, but Mac was always customizable!

See my post here to see an image of how I personalize my windows and more: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4168919

Again, sorry to come on too strong and thanks for the great support.

Best,

Steve

Thursday 2 August 2012

Aug 2, 2012 9:16 AM in response to John Blanchard1

John Blanchard1 wrote:

Cmd-tabbing to the proxy is considered "interacting" with the proxy application, so it will stay open. Whether Cmd-tabbing is sufficient to be considered "interacting" is another question. Perhaps send feedback to Apple on this, but the proxy staying open is expected in this case.

Very timely input John. I was had just played around with things enough in SL to get things to work as Stephen said they had worked in the past. I was able to reproduce this in Lion also. What I found was that when I did a command-tab to the printer proxy, I would get the progress window to show and everything would quit when the job was done.

I then tried the same technique in ML. Everything remained open after the job was done.

I did notice something different between ML and previous versions. In Lion and SL, when I would command-tab to the printer proxy, the progress window did not have focus. That is, it showed the information, but the title bar and the "traffic lights" in the upper left corner were grayed out. In ML, the progress window did have focus and it didn't quit. Anyone else able to confirm or rebut this observation? I'm just searching for answers too.

I did think of a reason why Apple may have changed the behavior. The printer proxies in ~/Library/Printers are applications. When the application is running and there is an open window --whether or not it has focus-- the application should not quit. Only when all application windows are closed and the application supports sudden termination should the application close on its own.

Aug 2, 2012 11:56 AM in response to Stephen Schulte1

Steve, thank you, but no apologies necessary! john

Aug 2, 2012 12:18 PM in response to Matt Broughton

Thank you, Matt, and thank you for the detective work. I hadn't noticed in Lion and SL that the proxy window did not have focus. I wonder, if this change was intentional, then, using the same reason you explained.

pengtao

Level 2

280 points

Aug 3, 2012 12:03 AM in response to Stephen Schulte1

Please forgive me for cutting into the conversation. Stephen, I noticed that you said "print box", which implies that you actually brought up the main window of the printer proxy. What happens if you click the red button on the top-left corner of the window to close it, then the next time you print to it, don't try to click the dock icon?

Aug 3, 2012 1:25 AM in response to pengtao

The next time I print I just print and wait. The document prints and 10 seconds later, 10 minutes later, an hour later… the proxy is still open. No auto-quit. It shows Canon MP640 "8.0" as the name of this (in DragThing) and when I either choose cmd-Q or Quit or close via the red top-left button it closes and disappears from the cmd-tab lineup and from DragThing's process dock etc.

Again, I'm doing nothing other than printing and waiting - no other movements to the proxy -- it just doesn't auto-quit like it did in SL and Lion.

Thanks for jumping in!!

Hopefully this can be solved.

Best regards,

Steve Schulte

Friday 3 August 2012

pengtao

Level 2

280 points

Aug 3, 2012 11:03 AM in response to Stephen Schulte1

Stephen, if you double click a zip file in Finder, the Archiveal Utility should launch and unzip the file. After finishing the unzip, Archiveal Utility should quit, I wonder whether on your system it does not auto-quit, either. Could you please give it a try?

Aug 4, 2012 5:39 AM in response to pengtao

This "Archiveal Utility" quits just like you said it should. Always has in the past 10 years or so ---

Just the darn Canon Printer Proxy that won't auto-quit.

Thanks for all the work on this everyone. I am traveling from 5-9 August and again from 11-19 August- should have my Mac with me the first trip; only the iPad the second---

Steve

Saturday 4 August 2012

Micah D.

Level 1

79 points

Aug 7, 2012 9:57 AM in response to Stephen Schulte1

I'd like to chime in that I am also having this problem, with my Epson WorkForce 840. Under all previous OS's when a printing job was finished the proxy closed.

Now since upgrading to Mountain Lion, after printing the proxy stays open and I have to manually close it.

ANY fix for this would be appreciated, but my guess is I'll have to live with it until there's an update to fix this since it's clearly a bug in the OS.

Can someone link to the bug reporting page for Apple? I don't know where it is....

How to have print box close automatically?