Renaming GreenCloud printer breaks functionality

Eco-friendly virtual printer driver to save money, save trees, and exchange your documents with popular cloud storage services
Yupo
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Joined: Sat Nov 09, 2013 9:32 am

Renaming GreenCloud printer breaks functionality

Post by Yupo »

Hi,

I've just installed GreenCloud, and discovered how to fundamentally break it - by simply renaming it to something more useful.

GreenCloud may be a cool marketing name, but for end users, calling it something like "Always use me to Print" or "!PrintPreview" or "1111AAAA" or ANYTHING which a) is more obvious to the unwitting user b) appears at the top of the list of printers. I intended to install this on various family members PCs, but no-one is going to think 'ah yes, the print preview, page reduction system is obviously GreenCloud in the list of printers'. Please don't suggest default printer - if ever a list of printers is shown, the most obvious sounding one will always be chosen. A printer called "GreenCloud" will always be ignored.

I'm having to choose an alternative from FinePrint, as v5 doesn't support Win7 (and v6/7 has such an appalling interface I'm not paying for that) - BUT it does allow you to rename the printer to what ever you like.

I cannot believe that such a modern app such as GreenCloud relies on the printer name (as opposed to a ProcessID) to communicate. What happens to people in non-English speaking countries? "GreenCloud" must make even less sense! To have an app claiming to be as 'mature' as v7.3.6.1.2.666.321 or whatever, and never to have checked such a fundamentally obvious thing someone might want to do does not make GreenCloud or your testing team look professional.

I'm fairly sure you'll reply by saying that to allow a GreenCloud printer to be renamed will require a fundamental change to the app, but as it's never been mentioned in the forum before, and it's the first test I try on any print preview system (inc the defunct iPrint, which GC seems to share many visual traits.) I had hoped GreenCloud would fare better.

Many thanks
Yupo
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Phil
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Post by Phil »

Hi,

thanks for your input! You're right we missed mentioning the fact the printer cannot be renamed. On the other hand - as you might have noticed - you're the first one to bring this up, so it doesn't seem to be as fundamental to most users.

The idea of GreenCloud is to be set up as default printer, so you just print to it always, and once it comes up you decide what to do. That's why we tried to keep the interface straightforward and comprehensible, even for less advanced users.

As you have guessed, the current driver implementation doesn't allow the printer to be renamed, and it would mean a considerable amount of work to change that. Given the overall feedback I hope you understand it's not a priority right now.

It should have been done earlier, but I will make sure to add an FAQ to outline this restriction and other useful information soon!
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