Re: HP 4MP printer driver current?

RobertB <missinglink@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1iwq5o3.1xj6oja49s1nkN%dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Empson) wrote:

RobertB <missinglink@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1iwq1q2.1w6rcqz1luna9nN%dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Empson) wrote:

RobertB <missinglink@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Am running 10.4.11 (Intel iMac) and have an old, reliable HP 4MP
Laserjet. I've been having all sorts of problems with a MS Word
doc that refuses to print beyond a certain point (printer utility
sometimes spits out "Unexpected EOF"). I can print the document OK
from Word X on my older iMac (G4) though.

Incidentally, which version of Mac OS X is your older iMac G4 running,
and which version of MS Word on the Intel iMac?

Both are running 10.4.11 and both have the latest system updates.
Yesterday, I upgraded the HP printer drivers but that didn't change
anything. I suspect the LJ 4MP drivers are the same since it's such an
old printer model.

That suggests the issue is related to how the specific version of MS
Word generates its print output for that particular document. Which
version of Word are you running on the Intel iMac?

Have you tried any of the following:

- Use the Preview option in the print dialog rather than printing
directly. Does the document look OK in Preview?

Yes, looks fine.

So the built-in PDF rendering can cope with the document, but it seems
there is a problem with the PDF-to-Postscript translation in 10.4.11's
drivers (possibly interacting with the PPD for your printer).

- Print to PDF, copy the PDF to your iMac G4 and print it from there on
the same printer. Any problems?

This is interesting. If I save it (Print>Save As PDF) as a PDF in Word,
I can print it successfully from Acrobat Reader but not from Preview
(which seems to use an RTF version of the file), which exhibits the same
problem as Word. I can print the RTF file from the G4, however (it's the
only version I tried to print from there).

Adobe Reader has its own PDF rendering engine, which is separate from
the Mac OS X one (used by Preview and the normal method of printing
directly from an application). It is likely that the problem is in the
area of system code which is rendering the PDF to Postscript, and Adobe
Reader is bypassing the problem because it is doing most of the work in
its own code.

I don't understand your RTF reference. When you print to a PDF, you have
a PDF file, not an RTF file. Preview or Adobe Reader would be dealing
with a PDF, and converting it back to an RTF would be a rather difficult
task (which would probably lose all structure of the original document).
Preview has no mechanism to do that. It can only save as PDF or various
image formats.

Something might have got confused and put an ".rtf" suffix on the
filename, but it is almost certainly a PDF internally. You could check
by opening it in a plain text editor like TextWrangler, or by using the
"file" tool in Terminal. A PDF starts with a string like "%PDF-1.3"
(indicating the version number of the PDF format it uses). An RTF starts
with something like "{\rtf1".

This problem has never happened before. Word has been pretty reliable
(although flaky from time to time), so has the printer.

The problem is likely to be a subtle one: something specific in that
document and the way in which Word prints it is causing production of a
PDF which the Mac OS X Postscript to PDF renderer can't quite handle (at
least for your printer). It is likely to be triggered by some content in
the doucment and could be very hard to spot.

I think this document is jinxed. Either that or the printer is
just flaking out.

If the computer is spitting up an "Unexpected EOF" error, it might be
generated on the computer and nothing to do with the printer. If that
message is being sent back from the printer, then it could be a
Postscript compatibility issue. A fault with the printer seems unlikely.

I'm guesssing the "EOF" message is something the printer software
identifies in the file at a location where it shouldn't be.

EOF is an abbreviation for "End Of File". The PDF to Postscript renderer
expected there to be more data in the file but it wasn't there. This is
probably due to it misinterpreting some element within the PDF which it
thought was supposed to contain more data than existed in the rest of
the file.

Unless I'm mistaken, EOF is not a Word or PostScript code. It's one of
those basic codes used by even the simplest documents, similar to LF (line
feed), etc.

You're probably thinking of ASCII codes, and none of them are called
"EOF". The most similar ones are ETX (End Of Text, Ctrl-C), EOT (End Of
Transmission, Ctrl-D) and ETB (End Transmission Block, Ctrl-W).

CP/M and MS-DOS text files popularised the use of Ctrl-Z as an "end of
file" character, but its ASCII name is SUB (Substitute, I think).

--
David Empson
dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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