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I have these pdf files of c++code and they are colored which would be cool, except that the network printer here is b&w and the printed out codes come in various shades of pale grey which makes them essentially unreadable (specially the comments).

I would like everything (text, codes, commands,...) to be printed in the same (black) color.

i've tried fuddling with the printer's properties, but the closest thing i see is the 'level of grey' tab, and there i have the choice between 'enhanced' and 'normal' (and it doesn't make a difference in my case). i've tried 'print to file', but i don't see any options there to print to b&w, I've tried installing the 'generic cups printer', but again no options to print to b&w.

any idea ?

(i'm on 10.10)

2 Answers 2

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Most of the printer have option to print as monochrome (that means strict black and white with no shades). Go to System->Administration->Printing, then, under "Color Model", choose "Greyscale"

The othe option is to convert your pdf to tiff image, its basically what OCR tools do:

gs -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -r300x300 -sOutputFile=output.tif -- input.pdf

for more info type man gs

The third option is to install kword, abiword or openoffice pdf extension and import the pdf , change color and print.

If you need it often, I'd consider installing Windows and acrobat reader into Virtualbox. It's really nice solution for such things.

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  • Go to System->Administration->Printing, then, under "Color Model", choose "Greyscale" I'm not totally dofus :). The reason i'm asking is because there is not such a tab on that one (it's a network greyscale printer). As for the two solutions you propose; it so happens that this pdf can't be opened by oo (it causes the pdf-extention to crash). Also, it's really a strange way to simply print in b&w. Surely there must be something simpler. It's okay if you find a way to print in b&w to a pdf file (directly or via CUPS)
    – user2413
    Oct 27, 2010 at 13:48
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    In Windows version of Acrobat Pro there's what you need, "print color as black" option in Print settings. I suppose there must be a simple way to do it on Linux.
    – skalka
    Oct 27, 2010 at 13:59
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    thanks for that (i don't have windows handy, but i seemed to remember that feature and was starting to wonder whether i was deluding myself).
    – user2413
    Oct 27, 2010 at 14:10
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    If you need it often, I'd consider installing Windoze and acrobat reader into Virtualbox. It's really nice solution for such things.
    – danizmax
    Oct 30, 2010 at 10:00
  • daniz:> can you put this as an answer so i can send some reps your way and close this .)
    – user2413
    Oct 31, 2010 at 11:07
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You can choose Plain Text as Highlight Mode before printing. In Gedit you can find this option under View menu. I guess every text editor as a similar option.

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  • the code is in pdf format (i've bolded-it in my question)
    – user2413
    Oct 27, 2010 at 9:29
  • Sorry, my fault.
    – skalka
    Oct 27, 2010 at 9:39

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