Remember Print type between jobs

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Currently, when printing one job and setting Print type to Image, the next time the print dialog is opened, the print type reverts to the default, which for a PostScript printer is PostScript.

The inconsistency is with the page range, where printing the current page and then raising the print dialog again, the current page is pre-selected, as it was used the last time.

Use case:

When scrolling through a document and printing either the current page or several page ranges, one must be careful to select Image as the print type in each instance (assuming one needs to do that in any case).

[Gregg Young]

Do you want it to always default to what was selected last or do you want it to always default to postscript when a new file is opened and only default to the previously selected setting in the scope of each file?

[Lewis Rosenthal]

My personal preference would be for it to remember the setting across sessions. While it is possible that I would set it for one configuration while at one office and another while at home, I may still open it 20-30 times in either place, still printing to the same printer.

The alternative approach means that we should always have to review the settings, either during the same session or in succeeding sessions, and I think this would prove to be a nuisance (I do it now, but only because after all these years, I'm used to it - LOL).

[Gregg Young]

This is done. Do you want it to remember the higher image quality button state?

[Lewis Rosenthal]

I think it should remember image quality and the orientation, as well.

The assumption should be that these are set once per session. Of course, we then have to deal with the next session and the beginning state, but setting default printing prefs is beyond the scope of this ticket (and the 1.4.0 release).

[Lewis Rosenthal]

RC4b seems to have been built sometime before I posted my answer to your question, Gregg. ;-)

Thinking farther into this (and perhaps this is an RFE to go along with annotations), inspired by your mention of saving settings to the ini file, I'm wondering whether a better place for these per-document prefs might be to store them in the document EAs, when possible (and the same for annotations). Food for thought (and more tickets), after 1.4.0.

[Gregg Young]

It was built before you answered this question and it only addresses the asimage issue. It was my fixing the original issue that lead me to ask about its associated checkbox.

Custom EAs could be developed for this. However I am not sure we could make the interface user friendly enough to make it useful. We have options to make something a per session setting (static variables) or a per file session change (static variables that are freed on file close. We can set a default across sessions (ini file entry either from a setting notebook or using the most recent choice) or we can set a default by file across sessions (either EAs or INI file).

Allowing multiple variations of the above possibilities would quickly become a programing nightmare. I favor allowing the setting of defaults and requiring the user to change the settings for everything else (which would change the defaults as the system is designed now). In addition. I could probably be convinced a single session file specific set of setting or a session specific set of settings (not both) would be OK.

Currently the print setting either revert to the default on reopening the dialog or revert to the setting from the previous use of the dialog (ignore margins, page selection and as image).