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From: alex@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Alex Pournelle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Instantaneous Printing: Is There Such A Thing?
Keywords: Nope, Sorry, EXPENSIVE
Message-ID: <1990Aug14.095812.27141@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us>
Date: 14 Aug 90 09:58:12 GMT
References: <1990Aug12.192507.25547@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> <3700@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Workman & Associates
Lines: 37

gaynor@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Jim Gaynor) writes:

>In article <1990Aug12.192507.25547@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> yip@mcgill-vision.uucp (McGill/CONCAVE Group) writes:
>>[...] take approx. forever (30 mins.+) to print, such as PageMaker

>	The closest thing to "instantaneous printing" that you could
>buy would most likely not only be out of your price range,

>[The] computer sends to the printer is the raw postscript data.

>[explanation that TANSTAAFL, and PostScript doubly so]

Hate to complain, but the protocol overhead on dear 'ol' PostScript and
especially LocalTalk is a major factor, here.  On a solo Se/30 connected
to a 68020-based NEC SilentWriter, it still takes for-freaking EVER just
to transfer the job to the printer.  Some of that is the silliness of
converting bitmaps to an ASCII-palatable format, shovelling that over
L/T and then re-bitmapping (a wart promised to disappear with P/S
version ][ or whatever it'll be called), but the protocol overhead of
L/T and background printing is pretty heavy too.

One man's opinion.  But having used a IIfx with a IINTX all the way down
to an Plus with a L/J I, I feel strongly about it!

(Not to say it's much better on the PC side.  I spent a 1/2 hour on the
phone to MicroSoft today about Windows 3.0 print "speed" and lack
thereof.  Oi.  The best cure is to spoof the driver by sending output to
LPT1.PRN or LPT1.OS2.  Riiiight.  Now I'm s'posed to get all this stuff
working on a Mac plus PC over Novell network?  Geez, I hope they pay me.)

	Doggedly,
	Alex
-- 
		Alex Pournelle, freelance thinker
		Also: Workman & Associates, Data recovery for PCs, Macs, others
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