Use a Classic-only printer as your OS X printer

May 02, '02 08:21:42AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Do you have an old printer that there is no OS X driver for? Well, I took it upon myself to use Acrobat to make a RIP-like device. While writting the AppleScripts for this, I discovered an easy way to print to your Classic printer from X.

First, you need to setup the printer in Classic and make sure it is chosen in the Chooser. Then get a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader and in the Show Info dialog box, chose "Open in the Classic environment" (it might be a good idea to have two copies of Acrobat Reader; one for Classic and one for OS X).

Then do a Show Info on any PDF file in OS X. Pick the "Open with application" dialog box and change the preview app to the copy of Acrobat Reader set to run in Classic, then click "Change All" to apply the changes to all PDFs.

Now, when you try to print from an OS X app and select the "Preview" button, it will open it up in the Classic Reader, where you should be able to print it just like normal.

[Editor's note: The only possible downside I see to this tip is that if you ever have a PDF you'd like to open in OS X, you'll need to drag and drop it onto the OS X Reader (or Preview). Other than that, this seems like a really easy way to use your Classic-only printer as your primary OS X printer.]

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