Printing in 5.3

[ashah]

Hi,

I have installed Editor 5.3 on a number of machines but I keep getting the following error on some computers:

" Arbortext Editor has no formatting capabilities. Can not print documents."

I have tried uninstalling and re-installing 5.3 but to no avail. We don't use Composer so it's just the Print Editor View function that I'm after.

Thanks in advance,

Ali

[bibach]

Ali,

How are you invoking the Print Editor View function? The only
composed printing option I have installed is via Styler 5.3, so if I
invoke Editor 5.3, all of the printing options on the menu are grayed
out, including "Print Editor View". However, if I invoke the function
via the command line ("FilePrintEditor" or "print editor panel"), it
works.

NOTE TO PTC FOLKS: Why is "Print Editor View" grayed out if no print
composition option is installed? Shouldn't this function be available
regardless?

-Brandon 🙂

[lfraley]

You need a print publishing tool in order to create print publications.
Without one, you can only print the editor view. Styler is one way, PE or
APP are two other ways.

Liz


On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 7:18 AM, Brandon Ibach <
brandon.ibach@single-sourcing.com> wrote:

> Ali,
>
> How are you invoking the Print Editor View function? The only
> composed printing option I have installed is via Styler 5.3, so if I
> invoke Editor 5.3, all of the printing options on the menu are grayed
> out, including "Print Editor View". However, if I invoke the function
> via the command line ("FilePrintEditor" or "print editor panel"), it
> works.
>
> NOTE TO PTC FOLKS: Why is "Print Editor View" grayed out if no print
> composition option is installed? Shouldn't this function be available
> regardless?
>
> -Brandon 🙂
>
>

[jsulak]

I think that in installations of Editor without Styler, the File menu
will have a "Print" option, which prints the editor view. When Styler
is installed, that's renamed to "Print Editor View," but they do the
same thing. That's versus the "Print Composed" menu option that
requires the additional (licensed) functionality.

Maybe if you install Editor + Styler, but invoke Editor without Styler,
Editor doesn't update its menus correctly? Our users print from 5.3
editor view with File > Print without problem, and the fact that we
didn't choose the Styler option on installation is the only thing I can
think of that might make a difference. Are you choosing to install the
Styler option when installing Editor?

At the very least, you could use menu_add to add File > Print and call
the FilePrintEditor command that Brandon mentioned. But that would only
treat the symptom and not the problem...

-James

[jdreystadt]

The "PTC folks" are looking into this to see if we can reproduce the
problem. Thanks for the heads up.

John Dreystadt
Software Development Director
Arbortext - PTC
734-352-2835
-

[bibach]

Ok, my bad. I think I may have glanced at the menu before I opened up
a document to test with, so of course all of the printing options were
grayed out. Then, I looked at the lib\editmenu.cf and saw the "#ifdef
feature_pubprint" line above the entry for "Print Editor View" and
forgot that this decides which version of the menu entry to add, not
whether to gray it out or not. Sorry about that, "PTC folks". 🙂

This still leaves open the question of how Ali was invoking the
feature, since printing of the editor view should always be available.

-Brandon 🙂

[ashah]

Thanks for advice on this issue everybody.

I have gone through this with one of my colleagues who was getting the error when trying to print. I got her to invoke the function
via the command line by typing "FilePrintEditor" as per Brandon's advice and the error disappeared. She was able to get a print-out.

This solution is similar to another one whereby the font display on screen would not print the size it was on screen when modified through the menus but would print the displayed size when set through the command line.

Very curious.

Thanks again guys. I will firstly try a command line solution before I bore you with my problem next time :))

[bibach]

While use of the command line can help solve some problems, I would
not expect most users to have to resort to it on a regular basis. In
fact, in one application that I worked on for several years, we
actually hid the command line (among other things) and only had it
available through an obscure keyboard shortcut so we could get to it
for troubleshooting purposes.

The "Print" or "Print Editor View" commands on the File menu just
invoke the FilePrintEditor command, so there shouldn't be any
difference between using the command or the menu selection. This is
why I wanted to know the details of what actions led to the error
mentioned before.

I always get suspicious when someone says something like "I told it to
print and it didn't work", because most applications provide at least
a couple of ways to do that, and if there are problems, then it can be
important to know exactly which method was used. It's always good,
before pursuing too much troubleshooting, to rule out the possibility
that the user just stared at their monitor and said "Print!". 😉

-Brandon 🙂

[AndyEsslinger]

Isn't that a feature of version 5.5? Just stare at the monitor, hold out
your hands, and visualize a perfectly formatted output.

-Andy
\ / Andy Esslinger LM Aero Tech Order Data
_____-/\-_____ (817) 279-0442 Box 748, Mail Zone 4285
\_\/_/ (817) 777-3047 Fort Worth, TX 76101-0748

[bibach]

Yes, but only if you have a properly licensed copy of Advanced Psychic
Publisher (APP) 10.

-Brandon 🙂

[ClayHelberg]

Dude, you need to upgrade--any decent cerebral implant should support
Bluetooth and/or WiFi. 😉

[ebenton]

Or else have a cerebral implant and a phone jack on the back of your
head with the other end of the cable plugged into a USB 3.0 receptacle
on your PC.