Our Day Has Come

Printing in OS X

Landscape Printing on HP Plotters After struggling to print 30 x 42" sheets on our HP design Jet 1055CM two weeks ago (version 6,01) it is frustrating to be facing it again in 6.04. This time it seems to require complex work arounds involving third party software and special settings judging by the posts below. The first time I was able to get it to work by creating a new custom sheet size with some good advice from HP tech support, but that does not seem to be the answer in 6.04. The only fix I have found so far is to open and save the drawing in PC2000 format for printing only. Bill, please focus on a resolution of this issue as it is a crippling flaw in an otherwise fine program to not be able to print a standard sheet size directly to an industry standard printer. Roy Abbott roy@architecture-1.com I have had some success plotting 30x42 sheets on our two HP DesignJets (800ps & 5000ps) by creating custom sheets that are 42x42 in the Page Setup Dialog box... then plotting them in portrait origination. Yes.. It does waste exactly one foot of paper for each plot.. but I am waiting for one of you brainy-acts to figure out a better workaround.. OR for HP to revise there OSX DesignJet Printer Driver to allow for 30x42 (ArchE1) paper size. Peter Drasnin pdrasnin@appleton-architects.com As it turns out... my wife is one of the "brainy-acts" of which you referred!! She works for the government and has used Macs since the beginning of time. She draws and proofs maps for the survey in the 300-500MB range with a now defunct (rest in peace) HP 3500 and now is the proud user of an HP 5500ps (your tax dollars at work!). She never had printing problems in OS9. Since moving to OSX she lost, completely, the ability to print landscape orientation on roll paper. No way. It's not a function of OSX however. It's HP's drivers, as has been noted on this thread. She didn't want to be wasting the paper you mentioned either and it pissed her off on principal, to boot. This is her workaround. Keep in mind it is not a custom paper size she is working with. It is a NEW default paper size! It shows up as default and she happily and successfully I might add, selects it when she prints her maps. Pure genius. SHE should be working for HP. HP tech support knows nothing of this. When the HP printer installer guy (this is what you get for your 18,000 bucks!) struggled to print her landscape format maps, he worked for most of the day to get it to work and failed. She went in and modified the printer description in 10 minutes and worked the first time... and everytime. Here goes... Go to the Printers folder in the main Library. PPDs > Contents > Resources > en.lproj (this is the english version of the printer descriptions that holds ALL of the page sizes) You can even throw the other versions away unless you should WANT to print with the Dutch version. Inside these .lproj's are printer description text files that the printer uses to print. At least some of the guts of the printer driver. At least the parts that are relevant to us! Find the HP Designjet 1055CM file. There will probably be a .gz compressed version and an uncompressed version. Double click on that one. It will open in TextEdit. Inside are all of (among other things) the default paper sizes. After you scroll down for a while you will eventually find the "inch" paper sizes as opposed to the metric paper sizes. In your case I'd pick this listing to start: *HPAutoScaling P24x108/24" x 108": " /HPDict /ProcSet findresource /SetAutoScale get true exch exec /HPDict /ProcSet findresource /SetDestinationPageSize get [1728 7776] exch exec <<>> setpagedevice" *End This is the last page size listing before the page becomes 36" wide. It is, obviously, 24" wide. Copy this listing, and paste it just after it in order. What we want to do is to change the page sizes in both inches and points (inches x 72 points) so it looks like this: *HPAutoScaling P42x30/42" x 30": " /HPDict /ProcSet findresource /SetAutoScale get true exch exec /HPDict /ProcSet findresource /SetDestinationPageSize get [3024 2160] exch exec <<>> setpagedevice" *End Note the inches and point sizes have been changed. It would be great if this were all we had to do but there are 5 more listing changes we have to make as we scroll down. Count them! ALL listings that use the original paper size must be copied and changed. They are all pretty obvious and direct except one listing which is under the "printable area" heading. The first number must be 22 points less than the 2160 (30") dimension- "2138", and the 3024 (42") must be 33 points less- "2991". Close the window, save, and print your brains out!!! This may seem overwhelming at first read but will make sense once you look at it thoroughly. You may want to duplicate the whole file onto the desktop for safekeeping unless you like working without a net to bail yourself out later should the dog throw-up on the carpet while you are making these changes, or some such thing. This actually works. Good luck and let us know. Peter Rosenthal Download Thanks to Peter Drasnin and Peter Rosenthal for supplying these PPD for HP DesignJet 800PS     PPD for HP DesignJet 5000PS PPD for HP DesignJet 1055CM PS Michael Spencer supplied these, but we're not sure if they have been modified as above or not. PPD for HP DesignJet 650C     PPD for HP DesignJet 755CM