How can I force Illustrator to always print with ASCII data?

[David_IT_Student@adobeforums.com]

I'm a student in an Info-Tech class, and now that we're done programming, we are working on graphic design (etc). The problem is, Illustrator defaults to print sending binary data, which our lab printer doesn't support. A few days ago, someone left the computer to print a large project, which takes several minutes per page to send -- it would be an overnight job. Next day, I had IT first block, and I came in to find the printer complaining about tray 2 (plain letter) being empty. I had just put in two packs of paper (500 pages each * 2 = 1000 sheets) in before I left the previous day, and there they were, all 1000 sheets, in the printed tray, with one to three lines of hearts and shapes and smiles and text on top of text. How can I force Illustrator to always send ASCII PostScript data to the printer? Oh, and I need to do the same for PageMaker, too.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

What Version of AI? in AI 10 go in the print dialog to where it says Copies and pages pull that menu down to where it says Adobe Illustrator 10 or 9 or what ever version you have and select ASCII where it says Binary.

In AI CS if you select a postscript printer go to the graphics option in the print dialog and there you can change the data type to ASCII as well.

[David_IT_Student@adobeforums.com]

(Version 9.0.2, to answer that) I know that I can tell Illustrator to print using ASCII data in the print dialog. If I click "Save Settings" or whatever, then it saves the printing options for that document. However, the students in the IT class seem to forget to select that option more often than they remember. How can I make it always default to send ASCII PostScript data to the printer?

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Perhaps write a script or create an action and give it the keyboard short cut of Command + P.

[David_IT_Student@adobeforums.com]

By write a script and give it a keyboard short cut, you mean... AppleScript (or shell script), or what? I've never seen AppleScripts with user-defineable keyboard shortcuts, or is that an Illustrator feature, or is it a Mac OS X feature? We are using Mac OS 9.2.2, not 10 (budget), so I can't do anything OSX-specific.

Could you be a bit more specific?

--
Thx, David

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

There are script launchers that you can often assign a keyboard short cut to to launch the script Illustrator itself has a script folder that shows up in the File menu. In Illustrator you can assign keyboard shortcuts to many of the functions that do not already have one. Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts. So you can write an Apple Script place it in the script folder then assign a keyboard short cut.

You can make an action as well and do similar.