Image Printing Problem

rbuser

I have a report with a ppImage which is used to print out a customer's logo.
The logo is black with a white background. When we generate a report, the
logo prints out fine in most cases, but every once in a while, the image
prints out at a solid black box. We only observe this behavior on printed
reports (no problems in preview mode). The behavior has been observed on
multiple computers (2) and multiple printers (2). The behavior appears to
be somewhat random. For example, on one 209 page report, the black box
printed out 3 times. When we reran the same report, the black box printed
out 5 times.

I'm using Delphi 5 and RB 7.0.

Any ideas on what I should do to fix the problem.

nicocizik

Hi Brian,

This is more than likely a printer driver issue. If you are printing a
rather large report, the driver could be using too many resources to render
the image correctly. As a test, try setting the DirectDraw property to True
for the images in question and be sure they are not set to Transparent.
Also, you might try turning off the Report Outline to conserve memory when
printing.

--

rbuser

Nico-
I am experiencing the same problem. I have followed your (DM's) advise from
a prior post and updated printer drivers -- yet I see the same random
occurrence. I also have tested with DirectDraw true, and DirectDraw false
with the same results - random occurrences of the black box. At first I
thought it was a memory leak problem, but that is not the case, one prints
correct, followed by black box, followed by correct image. I have isolated
the target problem printers to the general category of inkjet printers
(including multi-function) regardless of the connection method (parallel,
serial, usb or network share) as I have never experienced the problem on a
laser printer. It does not matter what graphic type - bmp or jpg.

Any other ideas? I really can not force my clients to purchase laser
printers with lots of memory.

nicocizik

Hi Mark,

We created a patch that fixes most of the "black box" image problems. If
you would like the patch, please send an e-mail to
support@digital-metaphors.com and we'll send it right out to you.

--