printing to HP455CA using pdf's and OSX

[jhutchison]

There have been many posts about printing to a plotter using pdf's in OSX. The following are results and problems that occur in our office. If anyone has reccomendations for the problems, we would greatly appreciate it.

Our network consists of 6 client macs (all running OSX and VW 9.5), a file server (running osX) a print server (running OS 9.2 and HP 455CA Rip software) and an HP 455CA plotter connected to the network via an external HP jet direct.

As many people w/ the 455CA plotter have discovered, we are not able to print to the plotter directly out of VW without getting PS errors. We CAN print to the plotter natively in OSX by generating PDF files and printing directly out of Acrobat. However, the following problems are occurring with our physical output:

1. Fills with lines in them print as a solid grey even though they appear correct in the pdf file. Hatches print correctly.

2. Images imported into VW print out as solid grey even though they appear correct in the pdf file.

We are so close to having a completely native OSX network---if only we could only resolve these glitches. Recommendations much appreciated.

[jhutchison]

Problem solved. I found that if I print the pdf to the plotter using Preview, everything prints correctly.

[Kurt Magness]

Do you print out of Acrobat in OSX native or Classic to the 455 ? I can not see how you get the PPD for the 455 in OSX.

[jhutchison]

As I mentioned in my original post, our network consists of 6 client macs (all running OSX and VW 9.5), a file server (running osX) a print server (running OS 9.2 and HP 455CA Rip software) and an HP 455CA plotter connected to the network via an external HP jet direct.

With the HP RIP software running in OS 9.2 on the preint server, all client macs running OSX can see the 455CA in the Print Center under "Appletalk" connection. All you do to get the PPD file is copy the HP455 CA PPD file from the System folder of the OS9 Print Server to the Mac OS X client Hard Drive. Once you do that, you can select the ppd file in Print Center by clicking on "Printer Model", scroll to the bottom of the list, choose "Other" and find the HP 455CA PPD file which you copied to the OSX client.

That's it---you're done.

[jhutchison]

oh---and I forgot to mention---yes we print out of Acrobat and Preview natively in OS X. In fact, all of our client machines no longer use classic to print. We just send the print files to the OS9 print server and let it do the rest.

[Kurt Magness]

Thanks for all the tips. I did not realize that you could select the 455's ppd through the other option in the print center. I just went into my extensions in my OS 9 folder. It all seems so easy now. Additionally maybe you could try this test regarding the post script error message you get if you print directly from VWKS 9.5 I had a problem with VWKS crashing in OSX when I opened some files,but not all. As it turns out I had a font that was corrupted. When I removed the font from the system then all worked fine including printing directly from VWKS 9.5 in OS X to the 455 on the network running the RIP on an print sever running OS 9.2 ! I did a test with a file that had the bad font in VWKS 9.5 on a OS 9.5 machine and it crashed the RIP with the postsrcipt error problem. Then I took that same file and opened it in VWKS 9.5 on the machine running OSX. It subsituded geneva for the bad font and printed fine directly from VWKS9.5 on an OSX machine to the 455RIP on the OS 9.2 machine! I will do further testing but could it be a bad font crashes the RIP not any inherent problem with the 455 RIP or VWKS 9.5? And then you do not have to do the PDF file, Acrobat business.

[jhutchison]

If that's true, it's a font compatibility problem with VW 9---not the rip software. The reason I say this is if you take the same file and fonts that crash the RIP in VW 9 and print it out of VW 8, it will not crash the RIP. Could there be a font issue with printing out of VW 9? We will investigate as well.

[Kurt Magness]

I think it was just a corrupted font. Not really a problem with either VWKS or the 455's RIP. There was no way to tell that the font was corrupted really. The only way I knew was a file I sent to VWKS tech was crashing VWKS in OSX. The file worked fine at tech support . They got the font substitude dialog box to replace the lithos font to geneva. So they though maybe it was the font. I got rid of the lithos font out of my system folder and the file worked fine on my machine. Then I noticed afterwards that I could print directly out of VWKS to the RIP without the postscript error. A few more tests and that seemed like the problem. I have since reinstalled the lithos font and all is well. I did get system messages on my powerbook that "some fonts are corrupted and ATM will try to fix them or reinstall the fonts from the CD". This i just ignored because it wasn't causing any apparent problem on my powerbook. But as I think about it makes sence. My Lithos font is a postscript font. I can see where it would cause postscript errors if it was corrupted. Maybe just a slight corruption enough to crash the RIP in VWKS9.5 but not enough in VWKS 8.5? Tech support said VWKS 9.5 and OS X is more sensitive than 8.5 I would suggest taking out any font that did not come with the MAC and see if you can print ok from VWKS to the RIP. Then put back in fonts one at a time to test or reinstall them one at a time. This Lithos font I had I got from a friend years ago and have been just draging it into the system folder for years on my machines. I since purchased the font and installed it correctly and all seems fine.