Printer Drivers in Anzio

How Anzio and printer drivers interact

With the release of Anzio 15 there is a new "printer setup" dialog that allows you to select numerous options for passthrough printing with Anzio. It is important to understand how Anzio Lite and AnzioWin interact with the printer driver in order to understand both printing problems and errors.

Within the Anzio default file, a specific printer name is carried. By default, this is the default printer. Whenever you make a local change (one within Anzio), we save this information in the default file. As an example, if you use AnzioWin's Printer Setup and change page orientation to "landscape", your next print job coming through the passthrough print protocol will print in landscape. If you then save your default settings for Anzio, this gets written out to the default file and restored the next time you bring up Anzio.

If you do not specify a specific printer, Anzio will always assume the Windows default printer. Likewise if a printer name Anzio has suddenly disappears, Anzio will also assume the Windows default printer as its fall-back.

When Anzio comes up it initially will load default settings into what is known as the printer property sheet and it "dev mode". This includes resetting global settings to what the prior local settings are as defined in the default file.

Problems with Anzio's defaults

If Anzio's default file is pointing to a specific printer and suddenly that printer no longer exists, or if the default printer name or printer driver changes, Anzio may lose track of correct settings for the current printer. Even a printer driver automatic update may change the printer driver structure and property sheet layout.

Anzio will still attempt to reload its settings into the new printer driver. While there is a rough guidelines for doing this, there is no set rules on what a printer driver "dev mode" and property sheet may look like. Hence there is also potential for problems, especially if the driver does not follow recommended guidelines.

When you try to print, you may end up receiving printer errors or get unexpected results.

Solution:

Go into the Printer Setup and change the printer driver to a different printer, change something in the printers properties, save Anzio's defaults under the File menu. This will change the default settings. Now go under the Printer Setup again changing your printer back, change something in the properties and save settings once more to reset to the current printer driver layout.

Since Anzio does load defaults on startup, if the printer driver property sheet does not match what Anzio tries to load into it, some printer drivers do not behave well and end up killing the Anzio job, faulting our application without any remorse. These poorly behaving printer drivers can be a problem.

Solution

The simple solution is to start Anzio from scratch and clear out that default file. In this case you may not even be able to bring Anzio up due to the printer driver interaction and the corrupted default file.

Instead, go under the Start : All Programs Windows item and look for the Anzio folder. Here you should run the "Anzio Lite (new connection) or "AnzioWin (new connection)" menu item to start a fresh default file.

Additional notes on printer driver interaction

There are a great number of possible problems when interacting with printer drivers. Printer driver updates, changes in printers, mismatched printer languages, and even Windows updates may cause circumstances that confuse or clobber printing.

In Anzio, passthrough printing depends on both the host data coming through matching the printer language and Anzio's settings matching the printer driver.

If the host application sends out raw printer codes, then Anzio's printer settings (and the global printer settings for the printer, may never even have an influence on the print job. These types of print jobs need to print through a "spooler" or "raw" level of printing. In AnzioWin with Print Wizard turned on, this will take place automatically. If Print Wizard is not turned on, or you are running Anzio Lite, you should change the print level to "spooler" (or "raw" if spooler does not give the desired results. At this point, the interaction of a printer driver may just confuse issues.

If the host is sending out text only, the printer driver should be involved in order to make things fit as the user might request by setting printer driver properties.

Additionally, printer language escape and control codes sent from the host, must still match the language of the printer, i.e. watch out for print jobs trying to print Epson codes on an HP PCL printer or vise versa. Know what printer language, if any, print jobs from the host contain.