Hello,
There is a known issue that a PrinterJob does not take
Chromaticity.MONOCHROME print request attribute into account on macOS
(JDK-8315113 [1])
The possible ways for solving the issue with black & white printing on
macOS could be:
1. Setting black & white printing with macOS API.
There is the deprecated PMSetColorMode [2] function:
"There is no replacement; this function was included to facilitate
porting legacy applications to macOS, but it serves no useful purpose."
and I was not able to find another one.
2. Using a predefined printer.properties file with black & white
key/value pairs for known printers.
It needs to maintain the property file to keep list with black &
white key/value pairs.
Or just leave only one default ColorModel=Gray key/value in the
property file so users will need to add another ones for their needs.
3. Using a PPD API to get the corresponding black & white value for the
given key.
In this way the black & white keys are printer specific and there
should be a way to provide these keys to the program.
Another way is parsing a ppd file to find the black & white
key/value pair in question. It still requires some search criteria to
find the printer specific key.
4. Adding a custom PrintRequestAttribute which allows for a user to add
a printer specific key values to PrintRequestAttributeSet.
These key/value pairs are then added to the NSPrintInfo
printSettings on macOS.
5. Providing other ways like a jvm option which allows a user to pass
black & white key/value pairs to the program.
Are there better solutions for the black & white printing issue on macOS?
What is the best option to start solving the issue with?
Thanks,
Alexander.
[1] https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8315113
[2]
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applicationservices/core_printing/1805783-pmsetcolormode
On 8/28/23 18:00, Alexander Scherbatiy wrote:
Hello,
I am working on issue "8315113 Print request Chromaticity.MONOCHROME
attribute does not work on macOS" [1].
There is PMSetColorMode function in the Apple Developer documentation
[2] but it is marked as deprecated
"There is no replacement; this function was included to facilitate
porting legacy applications to macOS, but it serves no useful purpose."
and really does nothing.
Using native print dialog and selecting Black & White box allows to
print black and white pages on macOS.
I dumped NSPrintInfo print settings dictionary for two printers when
the Black & White box is selected and the logs contain
ColorModel key, Gray value for HP ColorLaserJet MFP M178-M181-AirPrint
printer and
HPColorMode key, grayscale value for HP Ink Tank 115.
It looks like each printer can have each own key/value for Black &
White settings.
I tried to print key/values for all presets available for NSPrintInfo
without using the native print dialog:
----------
PMPrinter pr;
PMPrintSession printSession = (PMPrintSession)[printInfo
PMPrintSession];
OSStatus status = PMSessionGetCurrentPrinter(printSession, &pr);
CFArrayRef presetsList = nil;
status = PMPrinterCopyPresets(pr, &presetsList);
CFIndex arrayCount = CFArrayGetCount(presetsList);
for (CFIndex index = 0; index < arrayCount; index++) {
PMPreset preset =
(PMPreset)CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(presetsList, index);
CFStringRef presetName = nil;
if (PMPresetCopyName(preset, &presetName) == noErr &&
CFStringGetLength(presetName) > 0) {
NSLog(@" presetName: '%@'", presetName);
NSDictionary* dict = nil;
if (PMPresetGetAttributes(preset,
(CFDictionaryRef*)(&dict)) == noErr) {
// print preset dict
----------
The printers which I tested do contain "Black and White" preset but
they do not include key/values related to black and white printing.
What is the right way to use different key/values (ColorModel: Gray,
HPColorMode: grayscale, ...) in code to set Black & White settings for
NSPrintInfo?
Could it be a configuration file which contains all color model
key/values for all known printers?
Thanks,
Alexander.
[1] https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8315113
[2]
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applicationservices/core_printing/1805783-pmsetcolormode
