Epson P800 Driver Strangeness

[Chris Kern]

Is anyone else experiencing this problem when printing to an Epson P800 (or P[4-6]00) from Apple OS X/MacOS?

I usually print from an Apple Mac next to my P800, which is in the basement of my house and currently is running an old rev of the Epson print driver, v. 9.41.  When I queue a print job, the page set-up options include selections for sheet feeder, roll paper, front fine art, and poster board.  The first attachment shows these options; the example is for printing from Lightroom, but the driver exposes the same options to the operating system regardless of the application from which you choose to print: Photoshop, Apple Preview, etc.

I wanted to make a print today from a different Mac, in my second-floor home office, which is running the current rev of the print driver, v. 10.0.1.  When I queued the print job, as you can see from the second attachment, I was presented with a truncated list of page set-up options—namely roll paper, "borderless," and front poster board.  There was no option to use the front fine art feeder and my preliminary experiments suggest that it is not possible to print from a machine using the 10.0.1 driver if the paper is loaded that way.

I spent an hour in a chat session with a first-line Epson customer support rep and close to an hour on the phone with one of the company's USA professional printing reps.  What I learned was:

• This does not seem to be related to the APIs provided by the operating system.  The support reps tested the current driver on OS X 10.7, 10.10, and 12.6, and the behavior was the same as what I am seeing: the option for the front fine art printer was no longer available.
• This does not seem to be limited to the current rev of the driver.  The telephone support rep tested with driver version 9.86 (the version previous to the current one), and saw the same truncated list of options.
• Based on my experiments, the "borderless, retain size" option in the current driver equates to the "sheet feeder - borderless retain size" option in the 9.41 driver.  So if you select that option, you can't use the paper feeder on the front of the printer.
• Neither the chat support staff for U.S. customers nor the U.S. telephone support reps appear to be familiar with this issue, although in both cases they were able to reproduce what I was seeing.

Epson, alas, doesn't publish release notes or change logs, so I was unable to find out what modifications were made between v. 9.41 of the driver and subsequent revisions.

Mother always told me: "Never update your device drivers without having a specific reason to do so."  Seems she was correct.  At least I took her advice with respect to the computer I use for printing most of the time.

I'd be interested to hear any comments or advice from the printing experts here.  I know there are a number of you who use Epson products and are much more knowledgeable than I am.

[schertz]

See Mark Segal's post here: http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=118566.msg983426#msg983426
There is a new "Paper Source" pull down in the driver.
I'm still using the older driver as well...

Mike

[BradSmith]

You said:
"This does not seem to be limited to the current rev of the driver.  The telephone support rep tested with driver version 9.86 (the version previous to the current one), and saw the same truncated list of options."

For whatever it is worth.......I have a Mac running OS 10.11.6 and the older driver version you mentioned,  9.86.  My Page Set-up Options show the full range of choices, NOT the truncated list that you and the Epson Support Rep saw in 9.8.6.

Brad 

[Mark D Segal]

See Mark Segal's post here: http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=118566.msg983426#msg983426
There is a new "Paper Source" pull down in the driver.
I'm still using the older driver as well...

Mike

Hi Mike, I'm still on 9.86. As there is no advisory of new driver updates I didn't see they are up to version 10.0.1 now. I'm a bit reluctant to upgrade to the newer version and poke around just in case they have inadvertently left out the FFA path; though I find that almost unimaginable. Note I said "almost" - one can never say never. I shall see what more I can learn about this and revert here if anything useful.

[Chris Kern]

I was afraid of this.  There seem to be a lot of moving parts here.

Mike and Mark: I know you're both located in Canada.  Do you know whether your versions of the driver are the same as the ones available from the Epson USA site?  The telephone rep mentioned at one point during our conversation that the drivers were localized.  (The Epson USA website only offers a link to the 10.0.1 driver, but I found earlier revs on a couple of Epson sites in Europe.  However, the Epson rep advised me against experimenting with them.  I'm assuming that's because of differences between the hardware sold here and in Europe, but my guess is that the hardware sold throughout North America is the same, so I might try the Canadian 9.86 driver if I can find it.)

Brad: Neither of the Epson reps tested the current driver or the 9.86 driver on OS X 10.11, so you have provided a data point that is interesting in that it doesn't appear to be consistent with what the telephone rep saw on 10.12 with the 9.86 driver.  That is, assuming you and he are running the same software.  Your profile doesn't state your location.  Are you in the U.S.?

[gkroeger]

I just upgraded my OS and reinstalled the driver so I now have 10.0.1.  If I just select the "plain"  17x22 (first in the list), I can still select "Front Fine Art" from the Paper Source menu in the Printer Settings.

[gkroeger]

Just printed an 8.5 x 11 on Canson Platine using the FFA feed with the new driver... no problem.

[Mark D Segal]

Chris, as far as I know the hardware is the same in Canada and the USA. Epson Canada for many of its functions works off of Epson America. I think the technical specs of the drivers should be identical, with the possible exception that Epson would offer a French and an English language version of the driver here in Canada. As you don't need the French version you should be OK with 9.86 downloaded from Epson.ca. If there are problems, the worst that can happen is that you'll need to delete and replace.

gKroeger: That is good news, and makes me wonder something I was wondering about last night:
Chris: did you check the Paper Source dropdown in the driver Printer Settings?

[Chris Kern]

gKroeger: That is good news, and makes me wonder something I was wondering about last night:
Chris: did you check the Paper Source dropdown in the driver Printer Settings?

That is indeed the answer.  And this morning, fortified by a jolt of mind-clearing coffee, I realized that you had already provided it in that earlier thread back in June, Mark; I guess I was too fuzzy last night for your explanation to sink in.

For anyone who may experience this issue in the future and stumble across this thread, here's the summary:

In current revisions of the driver, what previously was a unitary menu of paper size, frame fill, and paper source options have been separated, and the paper source settings relocated to a Printer Settings menu.  To complicate matters further, different applications used for printing may offer different ways to access these two now-separate menus.  In Adobe Lightroom's print module, access to the paper size and frame fill options continues to be through the Page Setup button while the paper source option is selected with the Printer button.

Thanks to all for helping me understand this.  Except Epson, which

• when it makes a customer-visible change in device driver functionality should clearly describe what it has done in a document accompanying the driver download;
• should provide release notes for each driver revision so customers can make informed decisions about whether they want to install the new driver.

Finally, it's remarkable to me that neither Epson USA's first-line chat support staff (which, admittedly, was probably offshore and perhaps handling queries from multiple locales) nor its "professional printing" telephone support reps had been informed of this change in functionality.  Moreover, both reps I contacted told me even they didn't have access to release notes or change logs: they apparently have been kept as much in the dark as the customers about the contents of each driver release.

[Mark D Segal]

OK, glad it's resolved for you. I agree that there is a documentation problem with these driver updates.

[rdonson]

OK, glad it's resolved for you. I agree that there is a documentation problem with these driver updates.

That's why I avoid updating my Epson P800 driver unless there is good evidence that there is something worthwhile in the driver for me.  This forum provides that kind of information rather than Epson. 

[gkroeger]

While Epson should clearly document changes, and inform their support staff about changes, I do think this new organization makes more sense.  To me, choosing paper size and orientation is a very different issue than choosing where that paper comes from.  Internally, the paper size, image size and orientation are integrated into the macOS APIs, whereas paper source is an issue that is dealt with at the hardware/driver level.

[BradSmith]

Chris, you said/asked...:   "Brad: Neither of the Epson reps tested the current driver or the 9.86 driver on OS X 10.11, so you have provided a data point that is interesting in that it doesn't appear to be consistent with what the telephone rep saw on 10.12 with the 9.86 driver.  That is, assuming you and he are running the same software.  Your profile doesn't state your location.  Are you in the U.S.?

Yes I am.
Brad

[Chris Kern]

A few follow-up comments:

That's why I avoid updating my Epson P800 driver unless there is good evidence that there is something worthwhile in the driver for me.  This forum provides that kind of information rather than Epson.

This forum is a great resource, but except for a few participants who have close associations with Epson (and probably are subject to nondisclosure agreements), how do they know the contents of an updated driver release?  The Epson USA telephone rep—a "professional printing" specialist—told me even he and his colleagues don't know what changes are incorporated in each revision.  He said that when a customer calls with a problem that can't easily be resolved, they routinely ask him to upgrade to the current driver release.  But he also said they have no way of determining whether that rev will resolve the customer's problem.

To me, choosing paper size and orientation is a very different issue than choosing where that paper comes from.  Internally, the paper size, image size and orientation are integrated into the macOS APIs, whereas paper source is an issue that is dealt with at the hardware/driver level.

I agree.  This is a sensible change.  I have no argument with the substance of the modification, just the failure to inform customers (and customer support reps) about it.

Chris, you said/asked...:   Are you in the U.S.?[/i]
Yes I am.

I wonder if it really is necessary to localize device driver releases.  If it is just a matter of language and metrics issues, I suspect those could be resolved at driver-install-time.

Finally, and perhaps most important, I suspect I'm speaking for many LuLa participants in thanking you for your detailed reviews of printing machinery and papers, Mark—and your willingness to invest your time in answering our questions.

[Mark D Segal]

You are welcome Chris. Glad to be helpful.