Printing on OS X from Terminal Services

I have an ongoing issue that I have been trying to resolve for over a
year now and it is a recurring issue for Mac client computers
connecting over Remote Desktop to Windows Servers. There is no happy
medium right now between Microsoft and the Mac RDC client with
printing and it seems to be a very confusing thing.

Macs will print from any printer connected to them when connecting to
an NT4 server over Citrix, the server correctly maps a printer to
"computername"#macprinter which works for more than 90% of clients we
have seen. Unfortunately the NT4 platform is already unsupported and
we are trying to phase out our use of these servers but right now have
to put our Mac clients on these servers since they are the only ones
that will adequately handle printing from a Mac.

My question is two-fold, one is why is there not a feature on Server
2003 that will handle the printing like the NT4 servers of old, and if
there is not going to be that feature implemented why is the Remote
Desktop Connection for Mac not updated to support common USB printers
that do have Server 2003 printer drivers for them?

Again it is obvious by looking through this use-group that I am not
the only person having these issues, what type of numbers will it take
to get changes to start happening?

In article <1179846570.153532.245720 RemoveThis @n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
ramseysm2004 <duke_devils RemoveThis @snohio.net> wrote:

> I have an ongoing issue that I have been trying to resolve for over a
> year now and it is a recurring issue for Mac client computers
> connecting over Remote Desktop to Windows Servers. There is no happy
> medium right now between Microsoft and the Mac RDC client with
> printing and it seems to be a very confusing thing.
>
> Macs will print from any printer connected to them when connecting to
> an NT4 server over Citrix, the server correctly maps a printer to
> "computername"#macprinter which works for more than 90% of clients we
> have seen. Unfortunately the NT4 platform is already unsupported and
> we are trying to phase out our use of these servers but right now have
> to put our Mac clients on these servers since they are the only ones
> that will adequately handle printing from a Mac.
>
> My question is two-fold, one is why is there not a feature on Server
> 2003 that will handle the printing like the NT4 servers of old, and if
> there is not going to be that feature implemented why is the Remote
> Desktop Connection for Mac not updated to support common USB printers
> that do have Server 2003 printer drivers for them?
>
> Again it is obvious by looking through this use-group that I am not
> the only person having these issues, what type of numbers will it take
> to get changes to start happening?

Your problem is most likely that RDC for Mac does not support locally
attached non-Postscript printers. Most USB printers connected to Macs
would be non-Postscript.

Your only option will be to print to a network printer.

Microsoft has announced they will be releasing a newer version of RDC
but have not released any details or dates. I am hopeful that a new
version will support local non-Postscript printing.

Hope this helps! bill
--
William M. Smith
(Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows)