OSX Printing scriptability

[Thomas Seidler]

I have repeatedly been told that OS X (I now have 10.2.3 installed on one of

my 10ish machines) has got all the features of OS 9's brilliant osax 'Use

Printer'. This is the reason given as to why this osax has not been developed for OS X. But I don't reckon this is the whole truth.

MY OS 9 APPLICATION OF 'USE PRINTER' OSAX

1. I saved 2 settings for ONE printer: 'multipurpose' and 'upper tray' - which both printed from their different respective trays.

2. All printing could therefore be done without dialog boxes and 100% accurate. Before the [print(no dialog)] script step, I would place a [perform applescript("tell application "Finder"

use printer 'multipurpose' {or 'upper tray'}

end tell")]. I still have this in place, though it is rather more developed now. You can imagine how easy it would be then to print off orders that had a field containing 'URGENT' on coloured paper and thus making sure they could be picked out from among the hundred of plain paper orders and be picked in good time.

This was all very marvellous and still is now I have discovered it and I thoroughly commend its use to anyone outputting a large volume and variety of paper from your database. It's saves us at least 10,000 dialog boxes a year, additionally confusion for the users when we change printers, also a thing of the past is the substantial number of irate phonecalls from customers who did not get the goods on time. PS if you do try this you may well also need a 'Page Setup(restore)' in your script - this is specific to each database, so you need to run it everytime. Well, we do cos we have two printers and 9 different methods of outputing data in total!

WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR IN OS X

The ability to switch the default settings of printing behind the scenes via applescripting - if anyone knows or can make it happen please smile on me! Thanks to a chap called Steve Rothman I thought I had got there, but in reality I think I am still a few yards from the truth!

The following (nicked from SRothman) allows automated switching between printers

tell application "Print Center"

set current printer to printer("XXXX")

end tell

(this is quick if you have run

"tell application "Print Center"

activate

close window "Printer List"

end tell"

on start up)

But I would like to be able to specify which 'preset' it uses when it Filemaker runs its print(no dialog). If I could alter the 'Standard' preset from applescript that would be enough. I think. Anyone any bright ideas?

thanks,

tom

[dkemme]

Although choosing printer trays in OS 9 required the above (or other) solutions, I have not had any trouble in OSX. It seems to me that the saving of printer choices such as printer tray is a bit more robust. To choose manual sheet feed in OSX I've had much success creating a sub-script that is just a page setup and print without dialogue created just after I printed to the tray I wish to use. Then I just call whichever subroutine I need for that tray.

[Thomas Seidler]

above is right, and you can import them into all your files no problem, and they retain full functionality. This is da way forward. We run a multi-platform office, so we just have to program the beast to know which script to run, so it still works on the OS 9 ones. OS 10.1 is dufff for that print center stuff though. You can't configue printers amongst other things...