Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!sdcrdcf!csun!polyslo!dorourke
From: dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: REsolved: "There is nothing to choose" trouble
Message-ID: <2780@polyslo.UUCP>
Date: 21 May 88 07:52:38 GMT
References: <4822@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <440011@hpdstma.HP.COM>
Reply-To: dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke)
Organization: Cal Poly State University -- San Luis Obispo
Lines: 28

In article <440011@hpdstma.HP.COM> dave@hpdstma.HP.COM (Dave Waller) writes:
>There should be a file in your system folder similar to the notepad file that
>contains information about what you have chosen with the chooser. This is why
>replacing all the laserwriter stuff and the system and finder doesn't seem
>to help-- the file that contains chooser specific stuff is still there! If
>you blow this file away, things should be alright. Note also that this file
>may be invisible, so you will need ResEdit or something like that to
>manipulate it.

  Well Apple's Documenation was no help what so ever in this case.  I had to
look it up in "Macintosh Programming Secrets" by Scott Knaster.  The chooser
does not manipulate a file, but it changes a resource in the system file.
'STR ' -8192 will contain the name of the currently selected printer.  After
retrieving that name from the string you can then open the file of the same
name and rumage around inside it to find out additional information about the
printer.  Mr. Knaster gives a very good description of how to do this and
I recommend the book highly.
  The nothing to choose problem might result if the choose is smart enough
to look and see if the system file is locked, hence not allowing any
modifications to be made.  Since it has to store the current printer name in
the system file, if it is locked it can't do this, so it might give up with
the error message you saw.
  Hope this helps!!!

-- 
David M. O'Rourke

Disclaimer: I don't represent the school.  All opinions are mine!