Printing A5

I’m trying to do something apparently simple – to mail-merge from RISC OS Ovation Pro to either of my HP laser printers.

I’m using the PS3 driver. The main problem seems to be trying to get the printers to recognise that the job asks for A5 and the paper loaded is A5.

I set the Opro paper size to A5.
I set the printer driver to use a paper named as A5 with A5 dimensions.

The M277 color laser prints an error message about “offending command A5”. If I change the paper name to Cashbook it reports “offending command cashbook”

The P3015 mono laser printer keeps telling me to load A4.

I tried with the A4 paper definition in the printer driver. Now the P3015 will print from the manual feed after asking what size paper it has – but only one sheet then it reports “clearing” then “paper error”, and goes back to asking for A4 paper.

The main paper trays on both printers have side guides that can reduce the width to A5, and centre it in the tray. However if I use these, the printing prints where the top left of A4 paper would be, whether the printer is told it has A4 or A5 paper in that tray.

I can sort of use the photocopy facility on the M277 – it goes through "clearing2 for each sheet, so about 20 seconds per page. I then have to handwrite the data I was trying to mail-merge.

I’m desperately trying to switch to Word on Windows to do this, as I used the mail-merge there exactly once before, and found it awful. And I don’t know whether that would cause either printer to handle A5 paper correctly either.

HELP!

[Edit] I tried creating the merge document sideways on the top half of A4. Then I loaded the A5 paper sideways. I almost got it working. I had to confirm the paper size and type for the first sheet. It merged correctly. Then said clearing. I then put the second sheet into the feeder, confirmed size etc, and it printed. However it re-printed the first merge, so it acted as though the first had failed, and repeated it. The problem seems to be caused because the printer detects that the paper is too short.

It’s been many years since I set up my !Printers, and I find it best not to mess too much with it these days in case I break things – and (thankfully) I’ve forgotten a lot about the horrid workings of !Printers.

But,
I’ve just set the paper size to A5 in !Printers and printed an A5 sized OPro document to file using the PS3 driver. Looking at the PostScript output it doesn’t state anywhere that it is ‘A5’. It sets the page size using this:

%%BeginFeature: *PageSize Custom
<< /PageSize [ 420.997 595.350 ] /Policies << /PageSize 6 >> >> setpagedevice
%%EndFeature

which works fine on the numerous PostScript devices and interpreters/renderers I use.

I wonder if you have specifically got an ‘A5’ paper setting in !Boot.Choices.Printers.ps.Paper set for an A5 size?

Thank you. That gave me a hint. I tried print to file, then ps2pdf. Then copied the pdf to Windows, and using the Windows printer controls and Foxit Reader, set the printer to A5, manual feed and successfully printed the merged document.

THe issue when using RISC OS directly seems to be that it cannot tell the printer which tray to use, or which paper name. Even if I used the printer’s menu, or web configuration and set the paper to A5, it still kept asking for A4. Windows can give these settings in the job.

Two alternative suggestions. One get Richard Darby’s PS printer drivers or PCL drivers from PlingStore and configure as needed. But note the PS3 driver does not have an A5 page option by default. But the PCL ones might. Also I know it sounds silly but did you remember to set the driver to your A5 paper size and change the name in the Postscrip Printer configuarion window?
Second option is goto the printers control panel on the printer itself and go though the configuration and change the setting manually.

I was using Richard’s duplex driver as well as PS3. The printers in these tests were not set to duplex however.
I did try multiple combinations, including defining an A5 paper size, setting the printer control panel to A5 and using an A5 page size in OPro.
The result varied between printers. Both needed button presses on the control panel to make them start printing. The mono one printed the “offending command A5” message. The colour one printed the text that was set to red, but ignored the text in black. Both treated the job as an error, and the next sheet was a reprint of the first one, so mail-merge didn’t work.
Changing the paper name to Cashbook A5 produced “offending command Cashbook”.

Are you sure you are printing through the PS3 driver?

I thought that the PS3 driver set PageSize Custom
And didn’t use the paper name.