Garbage Characters in the Printed Documents
By default, ShadowPrint sends the document to the printer as an XPS document. Modern printers will not have a problem printing XPS documents, but some printers with older drivers do not print XPS document properly. The typical symptom is that the printout contains "garbage" characters instead of actual text.
What to do about it:
- Check the fonts that are used in the transcription. Some fonts are not supported on certain printers. Arial Narrow is an example of a relatively common font that may not be supported on some printers. If you can, swap out the font in the print template with something similar.
- Change the rendering format used by the ShadowPrint service account. This can be done from InCommand, under the Emdat tab, go to Advanced -> Procedures and run procedure named "Update ShadowPrint Rendering". There are 3 rendering formats to choose from; it is recommended that you try each one until you find one that works:
- XPS. The default format, described above.
- XPS Image. ShadowPrint converts the transcription to an image, embeds the image in an XPS document, and sends the XPS document to the printer. This eliminates any problems with fonts, but it is also less stable than the XPS format, as it tends to take much more memory for each print job. Because of the increased memory usage, it is recommended that if you use this rendering format, you also set the Spool Limit on the printer(s) to 1 job.
- DOCX. ShadowPrint converts the transcription to a Word Document, and uses a 3rd-party library to send the Word document to the printer. This format may work best for older printers, but since it relies on a 3rd-party component, ShadowPrint may not be able to detect whether the print job failed or succeeded.
- If none of the above formats works, escalate an InTrack ticket to the Development Group.