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Monterey printing problem

I just upgraded to 12.0.1 and can no longer print certain pdf files, specifically those created by TeXShop, which uses PDFKit. I get


ERROR: undefined

OFFENDING COMMAND: '`


or


ERROR: syntaxerror

OFFENDING COMMAND: binary token, type=157


  1. I seem to be able to print other pdfs.
  2. These files printed under Big Sur.
  3. If I read the pdf into Acrobat Reader, it will print, but this is an awkward work-around.


Any ideas?

Posted on Oct 28, 2021 1:46 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 19, 2021 8:09 AM

This appears to be a known bug in the way Monterey generates postscript.


Quick workarounds:

(1) Use a non-postscript printer.

(2) Open the pdf in Adobe Reader and print from there.

(3) If you are working in TeX, switch fonts. Use \usepackage{lmodern} to switch to the European version of computer modern. In my experience, this fixes any problems with print jobs on postscript printers.


I hope that Apple will address this problem soon. Many of us have created and posted pdfs that use computer modern fonts. When Monterey users (in my case, students) download and try to print these files on (university owned) postscript printers, they will get errors. Fixing this soon would indicate Apple's interest in supporting education.


[Link Edited by Moderator]

9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 19, 2021 8:09 AM in response to jeff-4

This appears to be a known bug in the way Monterey generates postscript.


Quick workarounds:

(1) Use a non-postscript printer.

(2) Open the pdf in Adobe Reader and print from there.

(3) If you are working in TeX, switch fonts. Use \usepackage{lmodern} to switch to the European version of computer modern. In my experience, this fixes any problems with print jobs on postscript printers.


I hope that Apple will address this problem soon. Many of us have created and posted pdfs that use computer modern fonts. When Monterey users (in my case, students) download and try to print these files on (university owned) postscript printers, they will get errors. Fixing this soon would indicate Apple's interest in supporting education.


[Link Edited by Moderator]

Oct 29, 2021 8:58 AM in response to jeff-4

I see. Old printer drivers are a problem. I have had several printers that I had to set aside because they stopped being supported.


In your case, maybe you could try recreate the printer using a generic Postscript driver, if it supports Postscript, or a generic PCL driver. Even though they probably don't support all the features of your printer, maybe they could er... print?

Feb 10, 2022 2:32 PM in response to Jeff Hirst

This seems to be what we are seeing on our M1 iMacs running Monterey 12.2 (latest version as of today, 10 Feb 2022).

Some PDF's print normally, others fail to print with no specific errors or a paused printer.


On the PDFs that print correctly, we have noticed that there is a typical delay of about 20 seconds while the print queue dialog is displaying "connecting to printer" and then it will finally send the doc. This is new to us since the upgrade to Monterey.


Users are also experiencing a higher than normal amount "Printer is paused" errors. Not a big deal on a consumer machine where the user is usually created with admin powers, but in an enterprise environment with many non-admin clients, it's wasting a lot of IT resources because an admin has to remote in and authenticate in order to "Resume Printing". This issue has gone unfixed for what... a decade now?


Monterey printing problem

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