Change desktop printer setting in OS 9.04?

In article , Dave
Balderstone wrote:

> In article , Edward
> Mendelson wrote:
>
> > Second, I'm
> > sorry to report that both suggestions run without producing any errors,
> > but they leave the destination folder unchanged. I've also tried (out
> > of pure desperation) to tell desktop printer "Test Printer" to make
> > those changes, but that didn't have any effect either.
>
> Are you sure you have the tell statements nested properly? You may have
> to have something like
>
> tell application "Desktop Printer Manager"
> tell desktop printer "Test Printer"
> set properties... etc.
>
> Post the code that runs but gives no results so we can look at it.
>
> Once I can get to my iMac that has SheepShaver installed (and determine
> if SS survived the upgrade to 10.6) I can play with some code, but
> there's currently a wife doing Christmas shopping in front of it and
> interrupting her is NOT a good idea.
>
>

Hey Dave,

I share your feelings about sharing code - and I know all about who
gets priority at the computer...

Here's some code that runs but does nothing:

tell application "Desktop Printer Manager"
set printers to get name of every desktop printer as string
if printers contains "Test Printer" then
get destination folder of address of desktop printer "Test
Printer"
set properties of desktop printer "Test Printer" to ¬
{class:address specification, destination folder:alias
"Unix:Folder for PrintFiles:", protocol:translator}
get destination folder of address of desktop printer "Test
Printer"
end if
end tell

If your SheepShaver setup didn't survive into 10.6, there's a build
here that works extremely well:

http://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=30713&highlight=#30713

The August 23, 2009 build works best for me. There are newer builds in
the same forum that reportedly work well in some setups, but not in
mine!

Thanks again, and good luck with SheepShaver running under 10.6.

- Edward

In article , Dave
Balderstone wrote:

> What if you change your approach?
>
> The code above shows you can create a new printer with the destination
> folder you want.
>
> So, can you test for existence of a desktop printer named "Test
> Printer", and if it exists just delete it and create a new one with
> exactly the properties you want?
>
> Lather, rinse, repeat?
>
> I rarely worry about a script I write being "elegant", I just worry
> about getting the results I want. A few CPU cycles are meaningless.
>
> Maybe this is one instance where elegance can be discarded if brute
> force produces results...

That was exactly the approach I tried first. Unfortunately it doesn't
work for these reasons:

1. I'm trying to create a setup that I can bring over to another disk
without any special setup - except for running a script that will set
the output folder (in the way I've been trying to do here). The reason
I need to set the output folder on each new machine is this: even if
the old machine and the new machine both use output folders named
Unix:Folder for Print Files, the Mac OS can figure out that "Unix" is a
different disk in each case, and won't "remember" the output setting so
it needs to be set on each machine.

2. The reason I can't delete and recreate the desktop printer is that
this "print through OS X" method only works if the printer's
"PostScript Settings" are set in a specific way. You have to set these
by printing from an application, choosing PostScript settings from the
dropdown list of settings, and then setting data format to Binary and
font inclusion to "all but standard 13". As far as I can tell, there is
no way to script these, so I can't recreate them each time I create a
desktop printer.

However, the settings do persist even when I change the destination
folder, and that's why I'm trying to script the change in the
destination folder.

Sorry to be so long-winded. This has been a voyage of discovery just to
get this far!

Thanks again....

- Edward