I, and several others here, thought we just had to share this little tidbit of HP printer driver info with the MapInfo-L community.
We've encountered some users recently who were experiencing the following symptoms on the HP 500, 800, 5000 series DesignJet plotters when printing Raster layers in particular, where the print output repeated itself every 2 to 4 cm using the HPGL2\RTL drivers, making for an 'interesting looking' plot, to say the least. I contacted a developer at HP who provided the following workaround to resolve this issue in the drivers themselves and were given a little surprise bit of info provided below. Turns out there is a nice little 'Easter Egg' in many of the DesignJet plotters which can fix this issue, and possibly other issues seen on this list (e.g.: out of memory?). There was another issue with transparent vector fill patterns not printing transparently on these plotters that was also supposedly fixed with a driver versioned 5.32 and the below 'Easter Egg'. Workaround: There is an advanced hidden setting that needs to be changed within the properties of the driver. The printer driver's properties can be located in the Control Panel under Printers and Faxes. To get to this setting, right click on the printer icon and choose properties. Click on the Advanced tab. From this dialog, click on the Printing Defaults button. From this dialog, click on the About button. Next, while holding down the F8 key on your keyboard, click the OK button. You should see a dialog that's called 'Special Options': In this dialog are a number of checkboxes that are only supposed to be used by HP Support Engineers (**There, you've been warned about tinkering with them) Note: This dialog may look slightly different if it is a version built for Windows 98. 1. If printing from Windows 98, uncheck the option for Enable RenderSmart. 2. If printing from Windows 2000 or XP, uncheck the option for Enable SpoolSmart. These options, if unchecked, should fix the problem described above. If you're modifying settings in this 'Hidden Menu' of the driver, make sure to note the original settings. I believe you can just reset them to Default by hitting a 'Defaults' key, if you forgotten them. I do not know how to make these hidden settings 'Stick'. I believe they need to be set each time. These are really for HP Support Engineers and not for general public use (hence being hidden). - You were warned twice :-) Kind Regards, -Bill --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 7229
