SWIIPrintUseMon Version 2.3 - Shareware fee 1UK£/2US$
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Greetings from Ringwood, Hampshire, England.
Background
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This utility silently monitors the number of pages
printed and warns you when your Printer cartridge is close to running out, so that you can either refill or replace it.
This utility owes its original inspiration to Sven Jakubith’s StyleWriter II PageNum utility. PrintUseMonitor supplements rather than replaces that utility.
This program is share-ware, and is subject to the usual terms and conditions. It can be freely distributed, as long as it is distributed with all its original documentation. The author does not bear any responsibility if anything goes wrong as a result of running this programme - what do you expect for next to nothing!!? However, I have tested it on as many different machines as I can lay my hands on, and the application has also been tested by a team of Beta-testers (thanks folks). It is an application that just runs once and quits, so it does not hog any memory and should not conflict with any other applications/extensions/control panels that may be running on your machine.
Shareware Fee
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I have discovered that even a small, simple utility like this requires a commitment of my spare time in order to support it. If you like this product, and decide to keep it, I therefore ask you to make a token commitment yourself in the form of a shareware fee. This is 1 Pound Sterling. Obviously, I would prefer English currency but, if you find it difficult to obtain this then I will accept 2$US as the next best alternative, or the nearest equivalent in terms of your local currency, if you cannot obtain US dollars (no cheques please, otherwise I end up paying the Bank more than the value of the cheque). Please send the registration fee to :-
Mr. S.J. Smith,
9 Farm Close,
Ringwood,
Hampshire.
BH24 1RZ
United Kingdom
Please enclose information about yourself, especially your email
address, (if you have one), and the version number of PrintUseMonitor that you have. If you send me an email address, I will say 'Hi' in return and let you know of any updates to PrintUseMonitor.
My email address is :-
smiths@ferndown.ate.slb.com
Steve Smith
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What's new in Version 2.3?
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Version 2.3 adds support in French for the Color StyleWriter 2400 printer, and in Dutch for the SWII printer. This version supports a number of languages, see the file "Support for other languages" if this applies to you. Version 2.3 includes support for other printers, including the "ColorStylewriter Pro" and the "Personal LaserWriter 300" printers.
This version also warns you slightly earlier that your ink cartridge is about to run out. This is when the number of pages printed reaches approximately 90% of the expected maximum cartridge life.
This application will also (optionally) show you the number of pages printed and the average print time per page (see the next section if you are interested in this feature).
How it Works
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PrintUseMonitor examines the printer log file (called by various names depending on the type of printer you are using and the language the system has been localized to). This log file is a TeachText/SimpleText document that is created (optionally) and updated by the Printer Driver whenever a document is printed.
Each time a document is printed, the driver adds an entry containing the number of pages that were printed, the time, the application that printed them, and so on.
PrintUseMonitor processes this file, finds all the lines that start "Number of pages printed: nnn", totals up all the pages printed and ends up with the grand total printed so far. If the total number of pages printed is greater than 90% of the expected cartridge life (default 300), a warning message is displayed in a window. If the number of pages printed is less than this number then the Application exits with no message (and without creating a window).
Optionally, if you hold down the command key while PrintUseMonitor is running, it will display the number of pages printed so far, and the average print time per page. Be sure to hold the command key down all the time it is running and not just when you launch it.
Installation
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PrintUseMonitor has to be installed in the same location as the Printer's Log file. The name of the log file and its location vary, depending on the language being used by the system. On English systems, it can be found in : "System Folder:Preferences:Printing Prefs".
The log file is called by various names, depending on the type of printer that is in use "StyleWriter II Log", "Color SW Pro Log", "Color SW 2400 Log" and "LaserWriter 300 Log" for example.
Copy PrintUseMonitor to the same location as the log file. If you cannot see the log file then the 'Keep Log file' option is probably not enabled. Go to the Chooser and select the 'Setup' button for your printer. You should see a checkbox entitled "Keep Log of Printer Usage". Ensure that this is checked. The next time you print a document, the log file will be created.
If you are running system 7, make an alias to PrintUseMonitor and move it to the ‘Startup Items’ folder. Thereafter, whenever you start your Mac, PrintUseMonitor will check the contents of the Printer Log file and warn you if the number of pages printed exceeds the suggested maximum. Note that this is the only time it will be run in this situation. You can also run it at any other time by double clicking PrintUseMonitor.
System 6 users should install the app in the same folder as directed above, then make PrintUseMonitor the startup application using ‘Set Startup...’ from the ‘Special’ menu.
Note that PrintUseMonitor does nothing (that is it just quits without creating a window) if the number of pages printed so far is below the maximum. It is designed to only create a window if the pages printed exceeds the maximum. In order to ensure that the installation on your machine is successful, I have included some instructions on how to test it, see the section on 'Testing the utility' later in this file. It should be stressed that PrintUseMonitor does not change the Printer file, but only reads it.
Customising the utility
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I have set the default maximum expected cartridge life to 300. This is roughly the expected life of the Ink cartridge for the StyleWriter II printer. If you want to change it to something else, then you can do this by adding the following line to your Log file...
*** Maximum Ink Cartridge Life:xxx
(replace xxx with your new maximum)
You will need to do this if you are using a Personal LaserWriter 300 printer (expected print cartridge life is 3000 pages) or the ColorStyleWriter Pro printer (expected print cartridge life is ??? pages). You may also need to adjust these figures based on your own experience.
(The Color SW 2400 printer has 2 cartridges, one for black and white printing, the other for colour printing. The colour cartridge prints 100 pages and the B&W cartridge prints 900 pages. The expected life here depends on hw much colour printing you do and can vary from a worst-case of 100 pages to a maximum of 1000 pages.)
Whatever new maximum you choose, PrintUseMonitor will start warning you that the cartridge is running out when the number of pages printed exceeds 90% of this figure, so you should get some advance warning.
Make sure that you get the syntax exactly as printed here, preferably copy and paste the example from this file into your Printer Log file.
When you replace or refill your printer cartridge, be sure to initialise the Log file, by removing the contents using the TeachText editor or any other text editor. Alternatively, delete the log file and a new one will be created the next time you print a document. Don't forget to customise this new file with the Maximum cartridge life, as described above.
"Cooking the Books"
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Of course, if your Printer Log file was not initialised when you last changed your cartridge, you will have to ‘cook the books’ a bit. One way is to have a guess at how many pages you have printed so far, and then change any one of the "Number of pages printed" lines in the Printer Log file to add this number of pages.
Printer with more than one Print cartridge
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The colour printers have more than one cartridge, one for printing black, and the other to print colours. The maximum in this case should be set according to how much you typically use colour when printing. If it is mainly black and white with the occasional bit of colour then set the maximum to the expected life of the Black cartridge (or slightly higher), assuming that the black cartridge will run out first. If you mainly print in colour then you should set the maximum to slightly higher than the colour cartridge life, on the assumption that the colour cartridge should run out first. In the extreme case, assuming the cartridges are used evenly, you should set the maximum to the expected life of the Black + the colour cartridges. Hopefully, this should give you an idea of the maximum and minimum cartridge life.
Testing the utility
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PrintUseMonitor only creates a window if it needs to tell you something. This means that there is little or no indication that
it is working. In order to give some confidence that the utility
has been installed correctly first, try double clicking PrintUseMonitor while holding down the 'command' key. PrintUseMonitor should tell you how many pages have been printed so far.
If you want to test that it will warn you when the pages printed exceeds the maximum, edit the Printer Log file as described in the section "Cooking the Books", so that PrintUseMonitor will thank that more pages have been printed than actually have.
Now run the PrintUseMonitor application. If it is working correctly you should get a message similar to the one shown
below :-
**********************************
* *
* WARNING: It is time to Refill *
* or Renew your printer *
* cartridge! *
* *
**********************************
xxx pages printed out of an expected
life of 300 pages.
If you have installed PrintUseMonitor as a startup application restart your Mac now to test that this aspect also works. When
you have finished testing, put your Printer Log file back
to how it was.
PrintUseMonitor also handles some foreign languages and displays messages in the same language as read in the Printer Log file. See the seperate README file called "Support for other Languages" for details.
Restrictions
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This facility only works with certain languages at the moment. I can add support for other languages, when requested to do so, although I do need to have samples of the foreign Printer Log file in order to do this, as well as a translation for the messages that I use, see the seperate README file called "Support for other Languages" for details.
This version supports the following printers :-
StyleWriter II
ColorStyleWriter Pro
Color SW 2400
LaserWriter 300
If you are lucky enough to have more than one of these printers, I am afraid that PrintUseMonitor will only work with one of them. If there is a demand for this feature then please email me and I will see what I can do.
PrintUseMonitor does not work with the StyleWriter 1 driver, as this driver does not have the facility to keep a log file. However, you can install the SWII driver with SW1 printers, and PrintUseMonitor will work then.
PrintUseMonitor can potentially support any printer that keeps a log file. I suspect that the LaserWriter 310 printer also supports a log file facility. I am keen to add support for these printers and would appreciate it if anyone can email me with the log files for printers that I don't yet support.
Troubleshooting
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Most, if not all problems are due, in my experience, with the installation. If PrintUseMonitor does not work then I suggest that you work through the Installation instructions carefully and follow the "Testing" section of these instructions.
If you don't even have the ‘Printing Prefs’ folder inside the ‘Preferences’ folder inside the ‘System Folder’, then this may be because you have not installed the Printer driver properly. These folders should be created by the Printer Driver install disks, but you should also be able to create them by hand. If you do, make sure that you get the folder names exactly right!
Known Problems
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I have noticed that the Apple StyleWriter driver does not always record the correct number of pages printed. This seems to happen whenever you print multiple copies of a document. The work-round is to edit the log file after this has happened and put the correct numbers in by hand.
If the log files gets above a certain size, you can no longer edit it using TeachText, I don't think that SimpleText suffers from this same problem. However, it is just a text file so you can use any editor on it. If you just want to reinitialise it then you can simply delete the Printer Log file and a new one will be created the next time a document is printed.
I apologise for the awful interface. It is the standard user interface that you get with Think C. I will spend the time on coding up a 'proper' Mac interface one day, when I have time.
(This program was written using Think C version 6 on a 4 MB Mac Classic).
Acknowledgments
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I would like to thank the following people for their help in the development of this Utility :-
