Crystal 11 by-passing the color/grayscale printer driver ?
We use Crystal 11.0.
A user wants to print certain docs in some times in grayscale. Grayscale [B][U]of the printer[/U][/B] to avoid the overcost of color copies counter in the multifunction machine contracts. :confused:
This user explains that he sends the color document selecting first the black/white option in the printer, but is printed in color.
To put a black/white logo in the doc is not sollution. The machine's counter would take as doc printed in color following the driver config.
They use our program entering in the server with a terminal server emulator. We think in other ways like this tool could have a printer config per user. :(
But I have doubs since see blogs where people using Crystal for MASS, SAGE, SAP, can have the same problem.:confused: They solve this selecting in the Crystal properties the [B]NO PRINTER[/B] as the default selected printer. But I see that we always use NO PRINTER option when we build and save our reports.
Ideas ?
Javier
Re: Crystal 11 by-passing the color/grayscale printer driver ?
Hi Javier,
I got excited when I saw this post as I have a meeting with our technical guys today to discuss exactly the same thing. I was hoping there might be some answers.
I'll keep you posted on what we discover. I also suggest you have a read of this document. It explains the very cryptic way Crystal handles printer drivers and their attributes. If you are targeting one customer you should be able to find a solution. In our case however the reports are generic and get distributed to hundreds of customers.
[url]https://archive.sap.com/documents/docs/DOC-21418[/url]
Re: Crystal 11 by-passing the color/grayscale printer driver ?
Hi Again,
So after a little bit of reading and much testing I think I understand the limitations and options. Who ever originally came up with this schema at Crystal must have had something in their water.
Firstly there is no way in Crystal XI to programmatically set whether you want to print in colour or grayscale. Hard to fathom why this is, especially when you can set things like duplex printing. If you preview the report first and use the preview's print button, this allows you to select a printer whose colour/grayscale setting will be honoured. It effectively uses the devMode structure from the printer. However if your printing directly to the printer this does not help, as the printers settings are not honoured.
When printing directly to a printer Crystal will either a) use the colour setting stored in the devMode within the Crystal report itself, or b) reset the colour setting to "print in colour". For this reason if the devMode in your Crystal report is set to print in colour, it's nearly impossible to print in grayscale (see additional Note 1 below). Crystal will use it's internal devMode colour setting in three instances:
[LIST=1][*]If your printing to a default printer and the Crystal report was designed with a default printer (note they can be totally different printer models)[*]If the name of the printer your printing to is the same as the name of the printer the Crystal report was designed with[*]If the "No Printer" setting is set in the Crystal report[/LIST]
Individual requirements will determine which way you need to go. For example, if you always want to print in grayscale (preview and export/email will still be in colour), design your report with a printer that has grayscale set, then tick the "No Printer" setting, and distribute like this.
Note 1: Discussions on this topic indicated that installing a Black and White printer driver could resolve the issue. If the grayscale is done at the drivers low level I can understand this, but I'm not sure where you would get such a driver. Certainly just changing the default Grayscale setting has no effect.
Note 2: There was mention that some advanced printers may not honour the devMode colour setting. In which case the above would not work.
Note 3: My testing was purely confined to the colour/grayscale setting, so I could not vouch for what happens with other printer settings.