printSettings.activePrinter not writeable in JS on Mac and CS4

I only got a s far as seeing if this was a possibility and this did work for me here. I set up a bunch of fake IP printers to test (half dozen).

I could then keep changing the index of the printerList array and each time this was the selected printer in the print dialog.

Printing added to the correct spoolers. What I think you may have to do is NOT have last used selected in system prefs.

This requires a little cleaning up as I cheated with the bridgetalk message for now. Don't know why filePath.remove(); is NOT working either will have to look at that too (could use shell rm but don't think I need to). Here is my rough test script…

#target photoshop

// Get current system default printer name

var defaultPrinter = osxGetDefaultPrinter();

// Get list of available system printers

var printerList = osxAvailablePrinters();

// Set system default to choice

osxSetDefaultPrinter(printerList[2]);

function osxGetDefaultPrinter() {

var shellString = "lpstat -d | awk '{print $4}' > ~/Desktop/OSX_Default_Printer.txt";

btMessaging('bridge', shellString);

var filePath = new File('~/Desktop/OSX_Default_Printer.txt');

var defaultPrinter;

filePath.open('r');

while (filePath.tell() < filePath.length) {

var defaultPrinter = filePath.readln();

}

filePath.close();

filePath.remove();

return defaultPrinter;

}

function osxAvailablePrinters() {

var shellString = "lpstat -a | awk '{print $1}' > ~/Desktop/OSX_Available_Printers.txt";

btMessaging('bridge', shellString);

var filePath = new File('~/Desktop/OSX_Available_Printers.txt');

var printerList = new Array();

filePath.open('r');

while (filePath.tell() < filePath.length) {

printerList.push(filePath.readln());

}

filePath.close();

filePath.remove();

return printerList;

}

function osxSetDefaultPrinter(printerName) {

var shellString = "lpoptions -d " + printerName;

btMessaging('bridge', shellString);

}

function btMessaging(targetApp, script) {

var bt = new BridgeTalk();

bt.target = targetApp;

bt.body = 'app.system(' + script.toSource() + ');';

//bt.onResult = function(inBT) {}

//bt.onError = function(inBT) {}

bt.send();

}

Get default printer could be recalled as a test as using bridge system commands don't return anything.