XPRINT SET COLORMODE - problem report

[Wolfgang Εnzinger]

In case anybody else encounters this ...

One of my programs is a GIS (Geographic Information System), and users
sometimes need to print the map. Coloured.

Until about a year ago, I used XPRINT ATTACH CHOOSE for printer selection,
and then the various XPRINT methods for actual printing.

Since XPRINT ATTACH CHOOSE is quite limited in various ways, I then
replaced it with the native method PrintDlg(). After the selection, the
settings were applied to XPRINT, like:

IF (@pDevMode.dmFields AND %DM_COLOR) THEN
XPRINT SET COLORMODE @pDevMode.dmColor
END IF

And now the problem started. As far as I can tell, only about 10% of my
users were concerned, and I couldn't ever reproduce the problem with any of
my printers myself. However, those 10% reported that the printer only
prints in b/w, even when they had chosen color mode in the printer
selection dialog. The situation was always the same: b/w is the default for
the printer, and the document setting "colored" is ignored.

I tried this and that, like ResetDC() and DocumentProperties(), to no
avail. Finally I decided to eliminate XPRINT completely and rewrite it all
using only GDI functions. Big surprise: no more problems.

Regarding the colormode, there must be a bug in XPRINT SET COLORMODE. The
weird thing is that this seems to affect only a couple of printer models,
one of them being Kyocera TASKalfa 4052ci. And XPRINT ATTACH CHOOSE seems
to set the colormode in a slightly different way - which makes the whole
thing work.

COLORMODE is the only property affected, others like ORIENTATION or COPIES
work perfectly in whatever situation.

Observed with PB/Win9 and PB/Win10.

Maybe this helps others who face the same problem. And, if dreaming is
allowed: maybe this will be fixed in PB/Win11.

Cheers Wolfgang

--
get it while you can