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From: mongo@helios (Mongo Package)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: PS page counter
Summary: You CAN count pages printed by some printers
Keywords: pages printed
Message-ID: <9722@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 11 Nov 89 17:25:26 GMT
References: <1consult@physc1.byu.edu> <4108@phri.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: mongo@helios.ucsc.edu (Mongo Package)
Organization: UC Observatories/Lick Observatory, Santa Cruz
Lines: 30
Sender:

Responding to an article asking how to count how many pages were printed
by a PostScript printer...
In article <4108@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>
>       Unfortunately, the short answer is "you can't".  PostScript is a
>real programming language with loops and functions.  One could, if they
>wanted, write the PS version of "for = 1 to 1000000, print 'hello'" and
>unless your printer accounting software had a full postscript interpreter
>in it, there would be no way to know that this little 1-line print file
>would produce thousands of pages of output.
>
>Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
>"The connector is the network"

Here at Lick Observatory we not only account for the number of pages
printed, but also for the amount of LaserWriter cpu time necessary to do it.
This is accomplished by using a home-grown printer driver which sends out
the LaserWriter commands "pagecount" and "usertime" before and after each
job is transmitted.  It reads these back off the serial port and takes
the difference at the end.  We then charge the print requestor for both
pages and cpu time.

(Disclaimer--I personally consider accounting for cpu to be particularly
abhorrent, but the UC _loves_ bureaucracy and _especially_loves_ to give
people pieces of paper that say "You owe us $$$".)

Steve Allen
mongo@helios.ucsc.edu           Internet
mongo@portal                    BITNET
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