Inconvenience with printer settings (Firefox and Thunderbird)
I am often switching office and change my system default printer always first when I am in a new place. I learned from the community here that the right thing to do for having Firefox/Thunderbird follow this choice is set print_printer to 'default'. The problem is that this does only work for a while. As soon as I use the selection dropdown in the printing dialog (e.g. to exceptionally select the PDF printer) it will overwrite 'default' by that printer. The consequence is that from that time on I have to manually select the printer or got to the config editor again to set 'default'. Is there any simple solution I overlooked?
If not can you tell me how I can make a feature request? A simple solution would be to include something like 'System Default' in the dropdown list in the printing dialog. Although for my taste, it would be better to have the selection in the printer dialog only temporary and return to the previous printer selection for the next printing.
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Unless your using that printer as your own - different places will change printer settings based on their locations and what they set. The only time the last printer used remains is if that was the printer that was used prior in printing. If this is not your own then your choices are limited to the computers you used set to their settings not yours.
Sorry, but I don't understand how this solves my problem. I am doing the default printer setting in the System Preferences (of Mac OSX) manually when I am at a different workplace. What I want is that Firefox/Thunderbird follow that selection. But Firefox/Thunderbird always try to use the last the last printer I used. So if I am not alert, it happens that documents I print at home will be printed in my office, printouts during business trips abroad get printed in my home coutry and so on.
I learned that setting print_printer to 'default' on the about:config page produces the desired effect that F/T always use the system default printer. Unfortunately, this setting is not permanent and changes back to a specific printer as soon as I use one.
So my question is how to make the choice print_printer='default' a permanent one which is not overwritten by the use of a specific printer. And if that is not possible how to make a feature request to have this possibility implemented.
Just wanted to mention that setting print.prefer_system_dialog to true does not help. You get the system dialog (without preview) but the behaviour is the same: printouts goes to the last used printed and not the system default printer. (Just printed an e-mail on a printer 55 km away...)
I finally found a solution which causes Firefox and Thunderbird to behave exactly as I want. I had to create a file user.js in the profile directory (the directory in which prefs.js resides) with the line
user_pref("print_printer", "");
If I restart Firefox/Thunderbird this preference will override the one from my last session and cause F/T to resort to the system default printer. Provided that I change the system default printer correctly and immediately when I move to another workplace this will prevent F/T to print on the printer of my last workplace. Still the mechanism to change the printer during a session works because user.js seems to be read only when F/T is restarted.
This works on Mac OS X with the caveat that user.js is only read once per system session unless F/T is explicitly ended. On Windows it should fall back to the system default printer every time the F/T window is closed.