{"id":529,"date":"2024-04-10T18:20:38","date_gmt":"2024-04-10T18:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/?p=529"},"modified":"2026-01-17T20:12:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T20:12:45","slug":"printer-presets-no-longer-working-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/printer-presets-no-longer-working-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Printer presets no longer working right? The bloody details. (rev: 12\/09\/25)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a historical document with technical details. A more recent version with a clear explanation of how you get around the corrupt preset problem can be seen by clicking here.<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

(If you are here for the technical details, scroll down to “The Gory Details”\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

April 10, 2024<\/span><\/p>\n

Original post:<\/p>\n

Well, I have good news, bad news and sorta between.<\/p>\n

The good news is that now I know why some user-saved custom printer presets fail spectacularly in MacOS Ventura and Sonoma. (Failure: user saves a paper type, print speed, sheet size, feed type and so on under a special name as a new preset. However when it’s reloaded that information is wrong: sheet feed becomes roll; 1440 bi directional become 2880 unidirectional and more.)<\/p>\n

This has made printer presets effectively useless, and for those who previously had dozens of them, having to remake all the settings by hand for every single print is tedious, time-consuming, and fraught with potential error, wasting expensive paper and ink.<\/p>\n

This has been going on for years now, and resulted in a lot of finger pointing, but no fix.<\/p>\n

The malfunction happens during the save new preset process. The data saved is missing some needed parts; it is incomplete. Instead of the need 90-ish entries, there are only about 10 actually saved. \u00a0So, when it’s loaded back in, the computer is looking for settings it needs, and they simply are not there. Without the needed settings, chaos breaks out. *<\/p>\n

The bad news is that I cannot fix it, since the failure to save correctly lies within Apple’s own code library. I can see the problem, but since I don’t have access to the code a fix is beyond my reach. There’s nothing I can do except point out the problem to Apple, which I have already done.<\/p>\n

That said, the sorta-between-news is that I have a work-around for myself, which was to delete and rebuild all the presets. I believe that any printing application that works properly will succeed in rebuilding your presets. Personally, I used Roy Harrington’s excellent Print Tool.<\/p>\n

Here are the steps:<\/p>\n

first, delete the corrupted presets by deleting the printer presets plist.
second, use CUPS to generate an uncorrupted default.
third, create new presets by beginning each by using that clean default.
<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

PLEASE SEE THE LATEST POST, \u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/a>BY CLICKING HERE.<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

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* The gory (TECHNICAL) details:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The problem began when Apple did a massive revision of the printing system in Ventura IIRC, and split presents into “Types” – Custom Preset and Print Job Preset. Theoretically, the Print Job Preset is the main (aka, the old way) one, and the Custom Preset is a variation, based on the Print Job Preset, but with a small difference, such as paper size.<\/p>\n

So this means that the Custom Preset contains only the few snippets of code that are different from the Print Job. That is Custom Presets do not have the full complement of data needed, and rely on also having a correctly filled in and functioning Print Job Preset.<\/p>\n

I believe that the problem is, that the system does not handle this correctly, and allows the Print Job Preset to be altered to contain only the subset of information from the Custom Preset. This wipes out about 80 necessary setting from the Print Job.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is clearly evident in the screenshots below.<\/p>\n

I spoke directly to the actual programmers at DxO (not support staff) and asked if they are doing anything different, since all their presets are complete. They said they are just using the Apple API and not doing anything special. Then I looked into the Xcode developer docs on printing, and found that there is no provision for third-party control.<\/p>\n

Upshot: it’s not a third-party issue.<\/p>\n

However, since carefully roto-rootering the existing presets and starting completely from scratch for a given printer does work<\/em> using DxO Photolab, it appears that the problem is as I described.<\/p>\n

It -may- be the case that if one deletes the existing printer presets as described in my post, and starts over using ONLY Print Job Presets, some success may follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Specifically, each preset entry includes a dictionary type “com.apple.print.preset.settings” which should contain about 90<\/strong> key\/value entries. If it does, the preset works fine. In many app-saved presets however that dictionary contains a random number of entires with random values, usually 10<\/strong> or less<\/strong>, and those presets fail to load and function properly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

See the attached screenshots below to compare bad presets (on the left) with a good one on the right.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Tracy<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Profile<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The left hand column show that there are only a few entires in changed plists, while the right hand one shows that there are nearly 90 entries in a working plist.<\/p>\n

Below is a verification of this: I took “DxO Fast”, made a few changes, and saved as a project job with the name “DxO Fast changed”. You can see why “DxO Fast changed” will not work: it has only 5 entries.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

for those who want them, here are the actual plists, one good \u00a0and one bad.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/transfer.pronet.link\/transfers\/Printer-Setup-plists.zip<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a historical document with technical details. A more recent version with a clear explanation of how you get around the corrupt preset problem can be seen by clicking here. \u00a0 (If you are here for the technical details, scroll down to “The Gory Details”\u00a0 \u00a0 April 10, 2024 Original post: Well, I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-info","category-photo","category-mac-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}