PageMaker printing problem in Mac OS 8 (and a work-around)

Russ Blaise writes: "When printing a document in PageMaker 6.5 under Mac OS 8, I sometimes get a warning saying: 'The driver failed to download all the fonts, close some windows or quit some applications and try printing again.'"

Apple Tech Support told him that "there is a conflict between the printer drivers in PageMaker and Mac OS 8." Russ found he could work around this problem if he used the technique of holding down the Option key when selecting Print (which "sort of" bypasses the PageMaker driver in favor of the Apple LaserWriter driver) and then choosing Setup from the Print dialog box and checking the option to download all fonts. He adds: "This works but some Print options are lost and it increases the time to wait for it to print the document."

Update: Several readers have pointed out that this is not an entirely new issue nor is it restricted to Mac OS 8. Rather, it relates to problems between PageMaker and LaserWriter 8.4.x that have been documented before (including in the MacFixIt link listed in the previous paragraph). More specifically:

Bill Murray writes: "The best thing for PageMaker users to do is to use version 8.3.4 of the Apple LaserWriter driver. This driver is 100% compatible with PageMaker's printing engine. There's no problem using the 8.3.4 driver with Mac OS 8 either - it works just fine. Adobe recommends either doing this or using version 8.3.1 of Adobe's PSPrinter driver."

Max Elander writes: "We use the PPDs that can be found on Adobes website. They are older than the ones that get installed with Mac OS, and they work. You don't get the nice icons on your desktop, but the ones you do get work."