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[HowTo] Print to a PowerPC-only printer


munky
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Despite Intel Macs being available for quite some time now, some peripheral manufacturers are slow to catch up. Today I was trying to print to a Lexmark printer, which doesnt have a native Universal Binary driver. This means the options are severely limited. Many of the options in the print options dialog of any given app are shown strikethru, and when you select them, you get the following message:

 

This panel is not compatible with your computer. Contact the printer manufacturer for the latest version of your printer software.

 

The problem is, of course, that this IS the latest version. I can get around the problem by quitting the app i'm currently trying to print from, finding the application and choosing the 'Open with Rosetta' checkbox. This opens up the advanced configuration options for the PPC-only printer driver. However, it quickly gets dull having to switch each app to run thru Rosetta just when you want to print.

 

So the workaround is to use the OS' built-in 'Print to PDF' option. Here's the lowdown - you use whatever app you want to print from natively (ie no Rosetta) and you choose to print to PDF. Then you open Preview.app in Rosetta and use that to print the PDF. If you find yourself having to do this on a regular basis, and you dont want to leave Preview.app to open with Rosetta each time, simply make a copy of Preview.app and call it Preview (Rosetta).app, and use that to open PDFs for printing.

 

Hope this helps someone!

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Fortunately, my PPC print driver works without a problem.

 

Another solution I read about is to go to Printer Setup Utility in the Utilities folder. Get Info on it and check the Open with Rosetta box. This should load the print driver in Rosetta and should work with any app.

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