Igor 6.37 and OS X 10.11 Print Dialog Bug Workarounds

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An Igor 6 user wrote:

With Igor 6.37, under OS 10.11.6, I have a major difficulty when printing a graph. When I select Print Graph, the window appears very strange with the superposition of different parts of the submenus.


Apple introduced a bug in OS X 10.11 that interferes with Igor's Print Graph dialog. We observed this in OS X 10.11 with Igor Pro 6.x. It is fixed in OS X 10.12 and does not affect Igor 7.

We have come up with a workaround which, though ugly, does work. In case you can't upgrade to OS X 10.12 or Igor 7, follow these instructions:

Choose Apple Menu->System Preferences.

Click the Keyboard icon to display the keyboard preferences pane.

Click the Shortcuts tab.

Click the All Controls radio button. This allows you to select any control in a dialog by pressing the tab key.

Close the Keyboard preferences window.

Now activate a graph in Igor and choose File->Print Graph to display the Print dialog.

Because of the bug introduced in OS X 10.11, the Igor controls appear shifted upward in the print dialog, overlapping other controls. There is a popup menu, partially obscured by Igor controls, roughly in the middle of the dialog. It says "Igor Pro", indicating that you are editing Igor Pro settings. If you don't see "Igor Pro" in the popup menu, click it and choose Igor Pro.

Because of the OS X 10.11 bug, clicking the Igor controls does not activate them. But you can activate them by pressing the tab key until the desired control is activated.

To activate a radio button, press tab until it is activated. To toggle its on/off state, press the space bar.

To enter a value, press tab until the desired textbox is activated and type the desired value.

To tell Igor to accept the settings you have entered, including which radio button is on, press the Enter Igor Settings button.

To print, click Print.

Igor remembers your settings so you only need to do this when you want to change them.

If you want to set other printing parameters, choose the desired item, such as Paper Handler, or Paper Feed, from the popup menu.