Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Qimage 2018.101/iPF8300

I can't select a media type for my Canon iPF8300; the only options available when I click on the Media Type dialog box are 'Unlisted [1]' and 'Set in Driver'. The status monitor is installed and operational, ICC profile selected, paper loaded in the printer and correctly set on the printer control panel and in the driver itself.

I also have a laser printer on the same network and the Media Type box correctly lists all the available media for this printer.

I'm new to Qimage; have I missed something or is there an issue with either Qimage or my system? I've tried this on three PCs and also an earlier demo version of Q2017, with similar results.

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Malcolm

This is an issue with the driver: the iPF8300 driver does not report any media types to Windows which is why there are none listed in the dropdown list.  For drivers like this that do not properly report media types to the Windows OS, you have to click the "Properties" button and select the media type in the driver.  From what I've seen, only the 8300 has this problem although the HP Z drivers sometimes fail to list some custom media types if the user creates custom media types.

In any case, selecting the media type in the driver using the "Properties" button will work even though it won't be listed in the dropdown due to the driver not reporting the selection.

Regards,
Mike

Mike,

That's disappointing to know, and mildly inconvenient, but thank you for a very quick, concise and helpful reply - much appreciated.

Regards,

Malcolm

Hello Mike,

So far the Z3200  custom media types are reported but now I have made one that is not showing in Qimage Ultimate but can be selected in the driver. Is it the total number of paper presets that gives the problem or the kind of names used?

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

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The driver is supposed to report all valid media types to Windows and looking at the Windows documentation, there is no (real) limit to the number of media types you can have, but each media type name should be a maximum of 64 characters.  So unless the driver allows you to use more than 64 characters for the media type name (it shouldn't), any media types that don't show in the dropdown list in QU would be a result of a bug in the driver.  QU reads the number of media types reported by the driver and the names for each.  So simply put, if you had 100 media types and added one more, but you still see 100 in QU, it means that the driver is still reporting a list of 100 media types to the Windows OS.

I know there is a long standing bug in the HP Z series drivers that caused various problems if you added more than a certain number of media types (or sizes).  I don't know if HP ever fixed that problem; I don't go into that level of detail in my testing of the Z drivers.

One thing that I think CAN happen as a result of "user error" is duplicate indices.  In some drivers that allow you to create your own media types, the media type creation tool allows you to specify a name and a paper index (basically an integer tag).  Each media type must have an integer index so IF the tool allows you to create two media types with the same index such as "My Photo Paper 1" with an index of 111 and you later create a "My Photo Paper 2" with the same 111 integer index... Windows may resolve that conflict by only showing one of the two papers since the index is how you choose the paper type and they must be unique.

Now, technically those custom-media-type tools should prevent you from creating duplicate indices for media types.  But not having the physical Z printer in my posession, I'm not able to test the utility to see if it prevents those conflicts because the tool won't run without the printer attached.  Might be something to check though.

Regards,
Mike