TechNote (Archived)

Printing Colors As Solid Black in FrameMaker 4.x or 5.x for UNIX

Adobe FrameMaker 4.x and 5.x for UNIX print color in shades of gray when printing to a black and white printer. You can change the print settings so that colors print as solid black on all documents, or on one document at a time. This allows you to retain the colors of the original document, yet make the document more legible when printing to a black and white printer.

To print colors as solid black in all FrameMaker documents, modify the ps_prolog file. The ps_prolog file contains instructions for changing the print settings, and is appended to the beginning of each print job.

1. Exit FrameMaker, then make a backup copy of the ps_prolog file.

- To affect all users running this copy of FrameMaker, create a backup of the ps_prolog file located in the $FMHOME/fminit/ directory.

- To affect your copy of FrameMaker only, create a backup of the ps_prolog file located in your $HOME/fminit/ directory. If you don't have the file in your $HOME/fminit directory, copy it from the $FMHOME/fminit directory to your $HOME/fminit/ directory.

2. Open the ps_prolog file in a text editor that can save in text-only format (e.g., vi).

3. Locate the section that controls the print functionality. For example:

% Frame products normally print colors as their true color on a color printer

% or as shades of gray, based on luminance, on a black-and white printer. The

% following flag, if set to True, forces all non-white colors to print as pure

% black. This has no effect on bitmap images.

/FMPrintAllColorsAsBlack false def

4. Modify the last line to read:

/FMPrintAllColorsAsBlack true def

5. Save the ps_prolog file in text-only format.

To print colors as solid black in a single FrameMaker document, print the document to a PostScript file and edit the /FMPrintAllColorsAsBlack statement:

1. Save the FrameMaker document as a PostScript file.

2. Open the PostScript file in a text editor that can save in text-only format (e.g., vi).

3. Locate and modify the /FMPrintAllColorsAsBlack statement, as indicated in steps 3 and 4, above.

4. Save the PostScript file in text-only format.

5. Send the modified PostScript file to the printer.

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