Multi-lingual, multi-user Mac... multiple Printer Drivers?

[GavinT]

Hello all. I looking to buy a MacBook Pro at some stage in the near future. But I have a couple of questions.

A bit of background first. Currently, my household has two PCs. My is a UK spec laptop with WinXP. My wife's is a Japanese spec laptop with Jpn Edition of WinXP. We have a (Japanese sourced) Canon PIXUS950 printer (called the PIXMA 950 in the US), which I then downloaded USA English language drivers for us on my computer.

We are looking to switch to Apple, and given that OS X (and the bundled iLife software) is multilingual depending on user preferences, it would mean that we would probably purchase just the one computer (a 15.4 inch) and spend the other money on an external monitor.

I'm a bit of a newbie to OS X (currently reading through some off and online material to get up to speed), and on of things I'm wondering about is installing multiple sets of application software and/or drivers.

For example, in Windows, the Printer Drivers that come with the Canon enable extra settings to be changed in the Printer dialogs. In Windows, you have to download specific language drivers.
So in OS X, would it be possible for me to install Mac Printer drivers just for my user account, and then install the Japanese language version for my wife in her user account?

I've been trying to read the Mac specific manuals for my printer on the US site, but unfortunally the Mac Help document is a dmg file, so I can't read it.


This page (http://guides.macrumors.com/Library) seems to imply that I could install multiple drivers if I needed to... but your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[janey]

There should be some way to install the same printer twice with different drivers and switch between them or something, or just install english drivers to your user account and the japanese drivers to your wife's.

macs come with ALL printer drivers preinstalled (a waste of a couple gigs..), so deleting those and installing the drivers straight from the manufacturer is not a bad idea. usually those come in installers, and usually the installers ask where to save to. not sure if you can always select a location or what, but..

 

[Makosuke]

Hmm... I'm not entirely sure about using two sets of drivers for a single USB printer. I know it can be done with network printers, so I'll go with maybe, although I've never tried it.

That said, the majority of Mac apps have multiple languages built in, and if one of them is the default for the current user account, that's what language everything will show up in.

So for example, if my account is set with US English as 1st choice and my wife's has Japanese as #1 (this is true), and I have the Multilingual Camino installed (in the Case of Camino, they offer an English-only download to save a little space if you don't want the extra languages), when I open it all the menus will be in English, while on her account everything is in Japanese.

Likewise, All Apple applications and the OS itself are fully multilingual, so each account will appear in the language of choice.

This is a huge advantage over Windows--there is no "Japanese" version of OSX, it's just whatever language you set up as the default for a given account. Even the installer lets you pick your starting language when you first boot the computer or install the OS. The only difference would be the keyboard, but there aren't enough differences in the Japanese keyboard to be worth worrying about.

 

[janey]

that entirely depends on localizations for that language. if there are no japanese localizations installed then obviously it's going to display it in the next available language in the list you specify in the International prefpane.

 

[Makosuke]

Yep. You probably won't even need to install anything at all, as the drivers appear to be multilingual from the get-go.

I just checked, and from the looks of it not only are the 950 drivers installed by default, but all of Canon's drivers (as well as any other built-in ones, I expect) are already fully multilingual. The print dialogues, settings, page settup, printer utility, etc all show up in whatever language the account is set to default to. I tested Japanese specifically with my S750, and it's there and works fine.

So it looks like it'll do exactly what you want right out of the box, no downloads or installation required.

 

[killmoms]

I just want to take this opportunity to say that Apple's support for multi-lingual apps in OS X is so graceful and easy, it makes you wonder why we ever had separate "Japan editions" of software in the first place. It's stuff like this that makes OS X such a joy for me to use. Hooray Apple, and hooray Japan!

 

[janey]

I just want to take this opportunity to say that Apple's support for multi-lingual apps in OS X is so graceful and easy, it makes you wonder why we ever had separate "Japan editions" of software in the first place. It's stuff like this that makes OS X such a joy for me to use. Hooray Apple, and hooray Japan!

To be perfectly fair, if i remember correctly, internationalization/(g)localization is currently being handled similarly in other operating systems as distributing binaries for every different language is a bit unwieldy. (besides, how else are you going to do it, unless you know that your target audience comprises only of people fluent in like only two languages or something, and then you can be a bit more creative) It's just that those localizations can take up a LOT of space (as running a program like Monolingual on your Mac can tell you), so unless there's a damn good reason (there rarely is), not many outside of indie developers and some projects will distribute multi-language binaries.

 

[GavinT]

Yep. You probably won't even need to install anything at all, as the drivers appear to be multilingual from the get-go.

I just checked, and from the looks of it not only are the 950 drivers installed by default, but all of Canon's drivers (as well as any other built-in ones, I expect) are already fully multilingual. The print dialogues, settings, page settup, printer utility, etc all show up in whatever language the account is set to default to. I tested Japanese specifically with my S750, and it's there and works fine.

So it looks like it'll do exactly what you want right out of the box, no downloads or installation required.

Cool!!!
Thanks for checking that out Makosuke.
Strange though that Canon have to have individual language spec drivers for Windows, yet do Multi-lingual for OS X

 

[Makosuke]

Strange though that Canon have to have individual language spec drivers for Windows, yet do Multi-lingual for OS X

Not really; Windows has come a long way in terms of supporting multiple languages, but it's still a long way from perfect.

OSX is designed from the absolute ground up, day one, beta version, to be completely language-independant and fully multilingual, and it's only gotten smoother about it over time.

The only part that isn't perfectly smooth are applications that are written using older tools--they don't always have smooth support of non-latin text. Any fully modern app, however, does--it's all Unicode (as necessary) so it doesn't matter in the least what language you're wroking in--it's all the same.

The ONLY OS-integrated tool that isn't multilingual, to my knowledge, is the speech recognition and synthesis software--those are limited to English and maybe Spanish as far as I know, because they were inherited from a much older version of the OS.

By the way, since Canon uses different model numbers for their Japanese printers, the downloads off the US site only have read-mes in European languages. I took a look inside, however, and the drivers themselves also have Japanese. No Russian, Chinese, or other asian languages for some reason, but Japanese is in there. Guess it's more commonly used.

Even if you did need to install two different drivers, I tested, and it would seem you can add two different queues for the same inkjet printer, each using a different driver. The OS asks you if you really want to do this, but it won't stop you. So worst comes to worst, you coulddo what you were originally asking.