Select Printer
Printer is the last entry on the Commander4j main menu. It lets you choose which of the print queues installed on this computer is the default printer, which is where reports and labels go whenever a screen does not name a printer of its own.
What the screen shows
A single list of the print queues that the operating system reports to Commander4j, one per line. The queue that is currently the computer's default printer is highlighted when the screen opens. The Microsoft XPS Document Writer is hidden from the list. On macOS and Linux the list shows each printer's description rather than its queue name.
Buttons
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Select | Makes the highlighted queue the default printer for this computer, then re-reads the list. Double-clicking a queue does the same. The button is greyed out when no queues were found. |
| Refresh | Scans the installed queues again, for example after adding a printer in the operating system. |
| Close | Closes the screen. |
No permission is needed beyond access to the screen itself.
Where the choice is used
The selection is made through the operating system, so it changes the default printer for the whole computer, not only for Commander4j. Any report or label that is started without a named printer is sent to this queue.
Screens that print labels have their own device drop-down, which remembers a printer per workstation and per screen. That choice takes priority over the default printer; see Label Printers for how those devices are defined.
Things to know
- After you press Select the screen can pause for up to ten seconds while it waits for the operating system to confirm the change.
- If the operating system refuses the change an error dialog is shown and the previous default stays in place.
- If nothing is highlighted, Select does nothing.
- The choice is not stored in the Commander4j database. After a restart the default is simply whatever the operating system reports.