Printing the manual

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Because I'm in Spain, I haven't been able to buy the boxed version of this game, and had to download it.

Now, when I try to print the manual, it keeps crashing my printer. A few pages print OK, and then either the printer stops with an error message, or it starts printing pages and pages of junk.

My printer is a LaserJet 4000 and is normally reliable. I suspect the problem in this case is that every page of the manual has a large background graphic, which is a pretty stupid thing to do because (a) it makes the text less legible, and (b) it makes the page much more complicated to print.

If you're going to release games that are available only by downloading, it would be considerate to ensure that the manual prints out easily.

[Erik Rutins]

Jonathan,

Are you printing the "Print Version" or the "Ebook Version"? Also, when you print from Adobe, I believe there is a setting that turns off background images. You should also double check to make sure you have enough room on the drive for the print queue and that you are printing in a language that your printer likes for graphics. Honestly, if you can print the cover page fine, then nothing else should be causing you any problems in terms of the amount of graphics. I have to assume something else may be going on with your print queue when it comes to large print jobs. What's the largest job you've printed on this printer other than the GGWaW manual?

Regards,

- Erik

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Hello Erik, thanks for your fast response.

I'm trying to print the print version of the manual. It's US Letter size and I'm printing on A4, so I tell Acrobat to resize it to fit the paper.

If there is a setting that turns off background images, I can't find it. Of course, for all I know the problem may be nothing to do with the background image, it just seemed a plausible explanation to me.

I have 65 GB free on the hard disk (sixty-five gigabytes) so I doubt that lack of space is a problem.

I already tried printing only 40 pages at a time, but that didn't work either, although I have printed longer documents in the past. I suppose I can reduce it to, say, 10 pages and see what happens.

It's a nuisance when the printer starts printing junk pages, because I have to turn off the printer to stop it, and then I get paper jammed inside and I have to remove the toner cartridge to clear it... I've had this printer for years and this has never happened with any other document.

Regards,

Jonathan

[Erik Rutins]

Jonathan,

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey
If there is a setting that turns off background images, I can't find it. Of course, for all I know the problem may be nothing to do with the background image, it just seemed a plausible explanation to me.

I can't find it now too, but I believe Marc has commented on it in the past. Hopefully he can chime in here as he is the PDF expert.

I already tried printing only 40 pages at a time, but that didn't work either, although I have printed longer documents in the past. I suppose I can reduce it to, say, 10 pages and see what happens.

I'd be interested to hear if that helps.

It's a nuisance when the printer starts printing junk pages, because I have to turn off the printer to stop it, and then I get paper jammed inside and I have to remove the toner cartridge to clear it... I've had this printer for years and this has never happened with any other document.

I've seen this before, but only when the print job is corrupted, runs out of space or jams.

How much memory do you have in your printer? Have you updated your printer drivers lately? Are you printing to the printer in Postscript or PCL? What version of Adobe Acrobat are you using to print the manual?

Regards,

- Erik

[Tac2i]

You might also try lowering the dot pitch. By default it is normally set at 600. Try 300. If you have the option, try using raster graphics. That usually works for me on difficult print jobs. Also, as noted, try 5 or 10 pages as at time.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

I can confirm that printing 10 pages at a time doesn't help. In fact, I think now that the printer simply chokes on page 10 of the manual and that's that. The error message I get (I notice now!) is "insufficient memory". Well, I'm not inclined to rush out and buy more printer memory for this one document, when it's printed everything else I've thrown at it for years.

I'm using Windows XP Professional SP2 and Acrobat 7 Professional (not Acrobat Reader). I'm using PCL because the LaserJet 4000 isn't a PostScript printer.

Printer drivers: I use Windows Update often and I imagine that would give me printer driver upgrades if they were available. But I suppose I should check HP's Web site anyway.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Hello Webizen, thanks for the suggestion. I looked around in the printer driver and found a page of Advanced settings, including Print Quality, which is set by default to 1200 dpi.

I lowered that to 600 dpi and managed to print ten pages successfully, although the background graphic is now visibly poorer quality and also more obtrusive. It would be nice to be able to get rid of it altogether.

I find that I can edit pages manually in Acrobat and remove the background graphic with the Touch-Up Object tool, but I have to do it one page at a time and the background graphic is divided into more than one object per page.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

I went through the whole manual deleting the background graphic a page at a time. I found that the background graphic is split into two objects on even pages and into nine objects on odd pages, so I had to delete more than 600 objects in total.

Finally I managed to print the whole manual. I still had to reduce from 1200 to 600 dpi to get all the pages printed, but the text is easier to read without the background graphic.

What a struggle! Meanwhile I printed a 196-page manual for another game with no trouble at all...

[Erik Rutins]

Jonathan,

I'm glad it printed, but I never intended you to delete 600 objects by hand! The odd thing is that it prints here on my stock (no memory upgrade) HP 2200 without a problem and yours is the first report we've had of any serious issues. I'm guessing there must be something specific about your printer driver or settings combined with this particular manual that causes more of an issue with resources on your system than others. Hopefully Marc can stop in and shed some light on this.

Regards,

- Erik

[Marc von Martial]

Let the computer spool not the printer. It´s sounds that your printer is doing all the work, not the PC.

It´s surely not an issue with how the PDF is setup. It prints in 5 minutes on my Canon.

[Tac2i]

I don't know if your Canon is a laserjet or deskjet but there is a big difference in the way they print. A laserjet can easily choke on a print job with lots of graphics, especially if it doesn't have much ram. Even a corporate size laserjet can choke on big documents with lots of graphics. The solution I've always used is to select "raster" graphics if that option is available. If not, lowering the dot pitch will help.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Hello Marc, I'm running Windows XP Professional, and print jobs do of course spool on the computer as usual.

The manual takes me much longer than five minutes to print. Bear in mind that my printer, although it works perfectly well, was bought in 1998 and uses an old-fashioned parallel interface, not USB, so it takes time to pass the data to the printer.

I could of course buy a newer printer, but up until now there's seemed absolutely no need to do so, because it's printed everything I've thrown at it without complaint -- except the World at War manual. The main problem seems to be not the background graphics but the bitmaps (photos etc.) that are used on some pages. However, it all prints if I go down to 600 dpi.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Hello Erik, I finally got around to downloading a printer driver from HP's Web site and installing it. Very odd: it's clearly quite a different printer driver from the one Windows XP installed by default, but I don't know whether it's better or worse. I would have expected that Windows XP would simply install HP's latest driver, but apparently not. I'll try the HP one for a while (dated 2003) and see what happens.

[Marc von Martial]

Oh no, Windows Xp installs for most of the part obsolete drivers from before the final Windows XP built that hit the store shelves years ago. The first thing I do after I set up a new OS is reinstall all necessary drivers to the latest versions.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: Webizen

I don't know if your Canon is a laserjet or deskjet but there is a big difference in the way they print. A laserjet can easily choke on a print job with lots of graphics, especially if it doesn't have much ram. Even a corporate size laserjet can choke on big documents with lots of graphics. The solution I've always used is to select "raster" graphics if that option is available. If not, lowering the dot pitch will help.

I see, well then having a Laserjet, combined with the age and that it´s running via a pretty slow interface might most possibly be the issue we have/had here.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Hello Marc. Well, to be fair, I wasn't complaining about the speed of printing: I don't really mind if it takes a long time, I don't have a lot of other things to print, so I can just leave it chugging away.

You may be right that if I choose to use a seven-year-old printer I shouldn't complain to Matrix about printing problems. The fact is that I wasn't conscious of my printer's age at the start of this thread, and I had to check through my records to find out when I bought it. It still looks almost new and it generally performs reliably with no trouble at all.

I tell you what, I'll withdraw my complaint about the printing problems I've had, because with a modern printer I probably wouldn't have any. But I still think the background graphics on each page are a mistake. They're distracting and make the text harder to read. I'm glad I've got rid of them.

Thanks for the attention you and the others have given to my problem. It was Webizen's tip about lowering the print resolution that enabled me to print the thing.

On the whole I'm still happy with my LaserJet. Over the years, I've bought a series of colour inkjet printers from various companies, and they've all been troublesome most of the time, whereas in seven years this is the first problem I can remember having with the (monochrome) LaserJet.

At work I've had experience of much more expensive colour printers, and they too are very often troublesome. By now I'm afraid to buy another colour printer, it seems like throwing money away.