LiveCode Forums.

I have a printing anomaly on windows.
From an LC 9.5 stack (and relative standalone) I try to print, with print card command, a simple registration form (which appears on the screen complete with all its contents) but in print I get the result of the attached image "img da Win1" (while image "img da Mac1" is correct): only in IDE and standalone for Windows the "table" field is obscured by a gray background not allowing the reading of its contents, while the others flds are read regularly. From LC 4.6.4 and beyond everything runs smoothly (IDE Mac and Standalone Mac ) but in 9.5 Windows (IDE and Standalone) it doesn't want to know.
I use Mac (El Capitan) and here, as I said, it's all OK both in the IDE and in the Standalone created for Mac, while in IDE Win and Standalone Win (Standalone for Win created on Mac) this strangeness appears using System from Vista to 10.
I tried to select / de-select the opaque of the "table" field, change the layer of the field, the opaque of the belonging group, the background pattern of the field, the card and the stack, I also reset all the various standard controls, in short I tried a bit of everything .. but nothing to do: the gray rectangle always reappears. Used the “set the formatForPrinting to true” for windows system and the inclusions for standalone are: Geometry, Internet, Printing, Table, XMLRPC, SQLite, MySQL, Revolution zip, Database, XML, SSL & Encryption, Print Dialog, PDF Printer, Answer Dialog and Ask Dialog.
Does anyone know how to give me some advice? Are there other settings to consider? It is the first time that it happens to me.
Thanks in advance
Sandro

Did you explicitly set that object to have a background color of white? Without that, you'll often see inherited color from the window, and that window color may buffer to the print rendering queue differently than how it gets rendered to screen.

Stuff like that seems often OS-specific, and used to drive me crazy. Now I explicitly set backgrounds to white and I get consistent reliable results.

If you don't, let us know and we'll work it out.

Hi
thank you for your reply. I tried to set white the "background fill" of table field as suggested (although I had already made some attempts to do so) but unfortunately the gray background always reappears. Also set white the "background fill" of the stack, but same results.
Sandro

Thanks. That's pretty weird, never seen anything like it. If you have a moment to make a sample stack that exhibits the problem I'll poke around and see what I can do.

I can't easily reproduce the stack because it is part of a further series of connected 'stacks'. Anyway, I'll try and send it as soon as possible.
Thanks
Sandro

Hi
sorry for the delay with which I answer. I prepared the stack where the strangeness I was talking about happens. But I can't add the stack. I get an "invalid file extension" error when I try to attach the file. How can I do?
Thanks
Sandro

Did you try it as .livecode or as a .zip file? Whichever failed, try the other.

I think files have to be zipped before they can be attached and sent.

Craig

Hi
OK thanks. I try to send it in .zip format. But does this also apply to a file of only 123kB?
Sandro

Hi
Ok. Here is the stack with the strangeness I was talking about. Pressing the 'print' button naturally produces the print with the anomaly.
Thanks
Sandro

Here the document prints well on both Ubuntu 18.04 and Windows 10. I should note, though, that on Windows I changed the syntax to print to PDF (I have no printer attached to the machine; haven't printed at all here in over a year).

I've never seen a rendering difference from LC regardless which output device is used, including a "virtual printer" like PDF, but just the same this test should be considered imperfect given the possibility of an errant printer driver.

I also notice the field in question does not have a color assigned to it. Normally this would cause it to inherit the effective background color of the card or, if that's empty, the stack, or if that's empty, the system default.

Try setting the backgroundColor of the field to white and see if that doesn't improve things. If not, double-check with the printer manufacturer that the printer driver is the absolute latest version.

If none of those work please report back and we'll see if we can come up with further diagnostics to pin this down.

As you said, works fine on Mac.

Craig

Hi
thank you very much Richard and Craig for the quick answers.
In fact printing with PDF (on the Mac you do it regularly), the error does not appear and, as Craig says, on Mac everything is regular. Unfortunately the effect is not only produced on my printer but also on several I have tried. The gray band always appears only on the two table fields, even if the color of the field is assigned to white, both in the LC IDE and in the 'standalone'
From LC version 4.6.4 up to 7x everything is regular. I have not tried on 8x. But on 9.5 there is no way to eliminate the damn gray band. I am therefore forced to use old versions of LC to avoid problems.
As an annotation I can add that the gray band appears only on the 'table' fields (?) because, as you can see, all the others are printed and are seen in a regular way.
I don't understand if it is a matter of Windows (in this case 7,8, and 10) or only of LC 9.5 with the various species of Windows.
Thanks again for your attention
Sandro

What happens if you also set the card color to white?

The odd thing here is that all other fields are printing correctly, so it's not a generic problem with fields.

Maybe try this:
1. Create a new stack
2. Add a field
3. Set the vGrid and hGrid properties to true
4. Print it

What do you get?

Ok. I attach the new stack (this time created on Windows 7 pro) with the features you proposed to me.
In MacOs everything is regular: the content of the field is read (as in the one sent previously) while on Windows a series of black lines is printed instead of the names present in the field.
At this point: it could be a problem in the installation of LC 9.5 on my Windows PC?
It is crazy ...