Colour Printing

[ezpzjohn]

Hi

I have a report that has a colour bitmap on it. I have found with 2 different colour printers that when I send the report to the colour printer the printer is switched to greyscale mode instead of colour. When printing from other software such as Microsoft Word, colour mode is selected by default.

What's going on?

John

 

[ramani]

Is the backStyle OPAQUE ?. Is this causing you the problem ramani :-9
(Subramanian.G),FoxAcc, ramani_g@yahoo.com

 

[ezpzjohn]

Hi Ramani

The bitmap is an OLE picture stored in a general field. I have placed the field in the detail band on the report. When I right-click on the field and select Properties, VFP recognises it as a picture, so I know that is OK.

Now, when I come to print the report, the colour picture comes out in greyscale.

I tried printing the report and in the Windows print screen that appeared I clicked on Properties next to the printer name. There I found that greyscale mode was ticked for the printer. I unticked it to return to Colur mode and then the picture on the report is in colour. Tried to print again and the same thing happened.

I have tried this on two colour printers, one Epson and one HP and the same thing happens. I wonder if this is something VFP sends to the printer to switch to greyscale by default and if so, how do I stop it happening?

John

 

[DEDMOD]

Generally I leave it to others who are more knowledgable on printing reports, but since nobody has answered yet, I'll make a stab at it. This sort of question comes up here quite a bit and I suspect you will find quite a few threads if you do a search.

The problem, if I recall is that your report puts a record with the default printer setup in it in table containing the report information and as long as this record is there it uses the information in it. For instance I just typed the following in the command window:

 USE rproject1.frx ALIAS rpt1
BROW

If you then look at the memo field 'expr' you see the following:

DRIVER=winspool
DEVICE=Xerox 250
OUTPUT=LPT1:
ORIENTATION=0
PAPERSIZE=1
DEFAULTSOURCE=7
PRINTQUALITY=300
YRESOLUTION=300
TTOPTION=1

In your reports, of course, the information will be different. Now you may be able to change information directly in this memo field to get what you want, or you can delete the record and the report will use the information in the current default set-up. (Of course make a back-up copy of the .frx before starting to play with the information in it.) Hope this is of some help.

Dave Dardinger

 

[DSummZZZ]

You might run into trouble if you delete the record, I don't know. I have never deleted it but, you can safely remove the printer setup stuff from the fileds. Do like Dave D. said and USE the file:

USE RptFile.FRX
BROWSE

In the first record you will see printer info in the Expr field, AND the Tag and Tag2 fields. Remove the info from all three places to tell Fox to use printer default settings.

Dave S.

 

[DEDMOD]

That's probably right. It makes more sense to delete the info than the record.

Dave Dardinger

 

[ezpzjohn]

Thanks to the two Daves for their suggestions and apologies for the delay in replying - I left it until I had chance to try things on the client's machine.

You were right in pointing me to browse the frx file for the report as this holds the printer info for the printer attached to the machine the report was developed on.

Rather than edit the frx fields though, I did MODIFY REPORT on the client's machine. With the report file open I selected Page Setup from the File menu and then clicked on the Printer Setup button. I was then able to change the printer colour settings and resaved the report. Everything now works fine.

Thanks again guys for the help.

John