Yay. Thank god for standard user interfaces.

We spent a serious amount of time this morning trying to figure out how to change the default attachment from TIFF to PDF on our new Canon imageRunners. We finally figured out how to change it on a case by case basis, but wouldn’t it be nice to change the default?

At first we looked through the Remote UI for the printers. Although there are some options under Additional Functions that refer to transmitting documents, none of the options mention TIFF or PDF.

So, we caved and unwrapped the CD with the manual. Looking for “PDF” resulted in about 200 hits. Paging through each and every one of them lead me to the control panel on the printer. Apparently, you can set it by following this path:

  1. Press “Additional Functions” (a button on the control panel)
  2. Select “Communication Settings”
  3. Select “TX Settings”
  4. Page down until you can select “Edit Standard Settings”
  5. Select the default image format

This option is not available through the Remote UI. In fact, the Remote UI does not resemble the Additional Functions from the control panel.

Which made me think. Was there at one point a falling out between the designers of the control panel and the designers of the Remote UI? Maybe each group thought their design was the best, and went their separate ways. Unfortunately (for the Remote UI group), the control panel group had much better relations with the features group, and the Remote UI group had to get the specifications via-via (but not directly from the features group). And so it came to be that not all the features are accessible through the Remote UI… Thanks, Canon, for making the user’s life just this much more interesting.