Hope my Borken Apple Printing
April 2, 2007 11:10 AM Subscribe
OSX: [ Print Preview / Print to PDF / Printing when the driver takes a PDF ] doesn't work anymore. I've already tried several things to fix it. Hope me!
Specific things I've tried:
repaired permissions
deleted my *.Library/Preferences/.plist files
and removed all of my printers and added them back in
rebooted repeatedly
banged on the keyboard in frustration
Specific behaviour:
I can open the print dialog, the cups access_log shows that the cups server is responding.
The pdf button will show the dropdown, but clicking on 'save' as PDF will result in nothing happening -- the window doesn't close, the save file as prompt does not appear.
The preview button is clickable, but nothing will happen at all.
The first time I use the Adobe 7.0 PDF (I have Adobe Acrobat Pro 7.0 installed) generator, it will work. Thereafter, not so much.
None of my printer drivers, which are xerox network printers and take their information in the form of PDFs, will work. -- clicking the print button does nothing.
Clicking the cancel button will work and close the window.
So basically it looks like the Print Preview functionality is broken completely. Any ideas on how to fix it? This is after a fresh reboot, btw -- so there aren't any processes hanging in memory that are trying to generate a preview.
Specific things I've tried:
repaired permissions
deleted my *.Library/Preferences/.plist files
and removed all of my printers and added them back in
rebooted repeatedly
banged on the keyboard in frustration
Specific behaviour:
I can open the print dialog, the cups access_log shows that the cups server is responding.
The pdf button will show the dropdown, but clicking on 'save' as PDF will result in nothing happening -- the window doesn't close, the save file as prompt does not appear.
The preview button is clickable, but nothing will happen at all.
The first time I use the Adobe 7.0 PDF (I have Adobe Acrobat Pro 7.0 installed) generator, it will work. Thereafter, not so much.
None of my printer drivers, which are xerox network printers and take their information in the form of PDFs, will work. -- clicking the print button does nothing.
Clicking the cancel button will work and close the window.
So basically it looks like the Print Preview functionality is broken completely. Any ideas on how to fix it? This is after a fresh reboot, btw -- so there aren't any processes hanging in memory that are trying to generate a preview.
I'm a little bit confused here.
The File>Print>PDF>Save As PDF... option doesn't use Adobe 7.0; it just (my understanding) uses Quartz's internal PDF-generation capabilities and dumps the result to a file rather than sending it to a printer driver.
Nothing from Adobe is required, and it should work regardless of what printer driver you have selected -- when you save as a PDF like that, you're not even sending anything to the driver, I don't think.
I second creating a new user account, and trying from there. If the new user works, then you know the problem is related to something in your ~/Library/ folder (user specific settings) and not /Library/ or /System/Library/ (systemwide settings).
If the new user doesn't work, then I think that something has gotten FUBARed in the print subsystem, and you're probably getting close to territory where it may be more productive to do an Archive+Install rather than really try and troubleshoot it.
Two more questions that might help to pin things down:
*Does printing to a physical printer work? If it's JUST the Save As PDF functionality that's broken, that gives you a place to start from. But if a straightforward Command-P > press return fails also, then I think that supports the theory that something is Really Wrong.
*Any idea when things started going wrong? Can you identify anything that changed that might have corresponded to when it stopped working? (New software, OS update, phase of the moon, anything.)
You might also try asking around on Apple's support forums (discussions.info.apple.com), but to be honest I've never heard of this happening before.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:09 PM on April 2, 2007
The File>Print>PDF>Save As PDF... option doesn't use Adobe 7.0; it just (my understanding) uses Quartz's internal PDF-generation capabilities and dumps the result to a file rather than sending it to a printer driver.
Nothing from Adobe is required, and it should work regardless of what printer driver you have selected -- when you save as a PDF like that, you're not even sending anything to the driver, I don't think.
I second creating a new user account, and trying from there. If the new user works, then you know the problem is related to something in your ~/Library/ folder (user specific settings) and not /Library/ or /System/Library/ (systemwide settings).
If the new user doesn't work, then I think that something has gotten FUBARed in the print subsystem, and you're probably getting close to territory where it may be more productive to do an Archive+Install rather than really try and troubleshoot it.
Two more questions that might help to pin things down:
*Does printing to a physical printer work? If it's JUST the Save As PDF functionality that's broken, that gives you a place to start from. But if a straightforward Command-P > press return fails also, then I think that supports the theory that something is Really Wrong.
*Any idea when things started going wrong? Can you identify anything that changed that might have corresponded to when it stopped working? (New software, OS update, phase of the moon, anything.)
You might also try asking around on Apple's support forums (discussions.info.apple.com), but to be honest I've never heard of this happening before.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:09 PM on April 2, 2007
Response by poster: The File>Print>PDF>Save As PDF... option doesn't use Adobe 7.0; it just (my understanding) uses Quartz's internal PDF-generation capabilities and dumps the result to a file rather than sending it to a printer driver.
Exactly. Quartz's internal PDF-generation capabilities are broken.
posted by SpecialK at 4:04 PM on April 2, 2007
Exactly. Quartz's internal PDF-generation capabilities are broken.
posted by SpecialK at 4:04 PM on April 2, 2007
Response by poster: *Any idea when things started going wrong? Can you identify anything that changed that might have corresponded to when it stopped working? (New software, OS update, phase of the moon, anything.)
Yes, I installed a Brother HL-2070N, which I had working before with this particular computer...
posted by SpecialK at 4:05 PM on April 2, 2007
Yes, I installed a Brother HL-2070N, which I had working before with this particular computer...
posted by SpecialK at 4:05 PM on April 2, 2007
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If you have convenient access to a working Mac (preferrably with the same OS version), you could try listing all the files in /System and /Library and looking for differences: find /Library /System | sort > fileN.txt on both machines, then compare the files with FileMerge (comes with XCode).
posted by you at 1:27 PM on April 2, 2007