Printing Problems With Older Programs

Programs written or compiled a long time ago often have difficulty with current printer drivers and versions of the Macintosh operating system.

For example, a number of MacMath programs have difficulty when "background printing" (in the Chooser) is on.

Other programs where difficulties have been noticed include:

  • Analyzer 3D
  • Surfaces
  • Complex Paint

    • If you run into such difficulties, one recourse which is usually possible is to do a screen dump. Holding down the command (to the left of spacebar) and shift keys while typing "3" creates a file "Picture < nn >" in the top level folder of the startup disk. You can doubleclick on this file and then print the picture from TeachText.

    If screen dumping does not work for you, most likely the reason is temporary damage from a previous printing problem. Restarting your computer, and just relying on screen dumping is likely to work fine.

    Normally, the printer extension choice in the Chooser should be

    Laser Jet 4Si MX

    for our laser printer, which is a 4SI MX . However the program Complex Paint appears to work better with the Laserwriter printer extension choice in the Chooser. If you experiment with this choice for Complex Paint, please reset the Chooser afterwards to Laser Jet 4Si MX.

    Sorry for the inconvenience which arises sometimes in printing from these very useful programs !

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    Last Update: October 19, 1995