Printing in Color

[ggrewe]

I have developed an application in VFP6, SP4 which prints the reports to a color laser. The graphics print in color, but the text prints grey scale. When I print the repotr to a file with Adobe Distiller, everything is black and white. Does anyone know how to deal with this and make color print correctly in both cases?

 

[DEDMOD]

I'm not sure how a printer, or printer driver could tell what was supposed to be B&W and what was supposed to be color. Have you tried printing your report to a really high quality printer (or is the one you're using high quality?) You might check your font and see if you can find a better one. I remember at one time having a problem with a gray-tone print but it basically was because the font I had wasn't designed for a color printer. Also, it may be that if you use a font which is present in the printer itself, it would help. But again, I'm not sure if this is true when you have pictures as well as text.

Dave Dardinger Dave Dardinger

 

[rianeiromiron]

Your could also try this trick

(backup your file first)

Open the .frx file for your report like this

use yourreport.frx

browse fields EXPR,PENRED,PENBLUE,PENGREEN


now in the EXPR field, which is a MEMO field, find the expression corrresonding to the field in your report. With that found, replace the following values

REPLACE PENRED WITH 0
REPLACE PENBLUE WITH 0
REPLACE PENGREEEN WITH 0

use


The trick is that in a RGB color definition format, 0,0,0 means BLACK.

It's possible the report designer is assigning a different set of RGB colors to the black. Try that and tell me.

 

[ggrewe]

Dave;

I am printing to a very high quality Color Laser, not an inkjet or deskjet. The font I am using is everyday Arial, which is already a True Type Font. If you have any other suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated.

Rianeiro;

I opened the report and found all the fields, no problem. The pen colors are correct for the corresponding colors. 255,0,0 for Red; 0,0,255 for Blue, etc. If I change them to 0,0,0 they do print and display in Black, which is the opposite of what I am trying to accomplish. Any other ideas?

Thanks to both of you.

 

[DEDMOD]

I guess I hadn't hacked reports much before. I didn't realize that each design item had its own set of color values. I'd assumed they were somehow taken from the printer driver, and maybe they are initially. I note that in the sample I pulled up which used Courier New, the values are all -1 for my fields; which I assume is some sort of default and 4, 0 and blank for some other field which is of object type 23, whatever that is. Color images don't have any values in those fields. Maybe your problem, ggrewe, is that you added the 0's to the pictures instead of leaving them blank. Dave Dardinger

 

[rianeiromiron]

I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to print in black.
To find the appropriate set of RGB colors, open a form, choose properties, doubleclick in (for example) backcolor property. The getcolor window appears, select or create the color you want. Accept. Now on the Backcolor property you will see the right RGB set of numbers.

Tell me if it helped.

 

[ggrewe]

Rianeiro;

Actually, I already have the correct color values in the form, they are just not printing for the text. The images print in color just fine.

 

[Scott24x7]

Ggrewe,
This may be the obvious, but it sounds like a printer driver issue to me. Does your manufacturer have updated drivers? What OS are you using also? I have printed on many types of printers, both laser and inkjet in colour, and any troubles I have encountered with color have always been attributed to issues with drivers.


Thanks,
-Scott

s-) Please let me know if this has helped s-)

 

[ggrewe]

Thanks Scott, I have updated the drivers. It is a Lexmark Optra C710 and it prints in color from Word or Excel, it just does not like Fox for some reason. We are printing from Windows 2000 Server. The computers with the program installed locally are running Win98SE, with the same result.

What bothers me the most is that when I generate a PDF, everything is black and white, no color at all. I am using Adobe Acrobat, which is really wierd as every other program I use with Acrobat generates the PDF in perfect color.

In the code, I do this, maybe I am doing something wrong here?

IF !EMPTY(.rc_Email)
lc_MessageTitle = .Caption
lc_MessageText = "Do you want to E-mail a copy of this proposal?"
ln_DialogType = 4 + 32 + 256
ln_SendeMail = MESSAGEBOX(lc_MessageText, ln_DialogType, lc_MessageTitle)
ENDIF

IF ln_SendeMail = 7
lc_PrintType = "NOEJECT NOCONSOLE TO PRINTER"
ELSE
SET PRINTER TO NAME [Acrobat Distiller]
lc_FileName = gc_home + "EMAILS\" + ALLTRIM(Customer.Sales_Code) + ALLTRIM(STR(Customer.Quote_number))
lc_PrintType = "TO FILE " + ALLTRIM(lc_FileName) + ".PS ADDITIVE NOCONSOLE"
ENDIF

REPORT FORM Furnace_quote1 FOR quote_number = ln_QuoteNumber &lc_PrintType