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From: allen@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Allen Norskog)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Deluxe (music) and DJ printing
Message-ID: <17190008@hpfcdj.HP.COM>
Date: 21 Aug 90 15:25:11 GMT
References: <1990Aug13.190229.20209@uncecs.edu>
Organization: Hewlett Packard -- Fort Collins, CO
Lines: 49

ruslan@uncecs.edu (Robin C. LaPasha) writes:

>Well, I can get Deluxe Music to run (by lobotomizing my caches.)  I can get
>it to play (though it takes over the audio device.)  But as for printing with
>my Hewlett Packard DeskJet - it prints one stave/staff and then ejects the
>page, continuing on the next page (which also gets just one staff...)

>Does anybody know what is causing that form feed command?

aoe@hpfinote.HP.COM (Alexander Elkins) writes:

>This is symptomatic of what personal experience has shown me with the
>HP LaserJet II, namely, it doesn't have enough memory to store the whole
>page in its memory.  The HP LaserJet II, without memory expansion, would
>only handle about 65% of a page at 300dpi.  The HP DeskJet can also be
>memory expanded, and so maybe this is your problem.  Perhaps if the
>printer driver supports a lower resolution, say 150dpi or 75dpi, you
>could then print a full page with the memory the DeskJet does have.  Also
>note that any fonts downloaded to the DeskJet (assuming you can download
>fonts) would also consume memory.

I've printed music with a DeskJet using Deluxe Music, and thought I
should make some corrections here.  One of the nice things about a DeskJet
printer is that it can print a full page of 300dpi graphics without
needing extra memory.  This is not the case for LaserJet printers where
you do need the extra memory.

When I printed with the DeskJet, I got 4 staffs printed - these were
the 4 associated staffs for the same measures -- two treble, and two bass.
I did play around a bit with Preferences to get the style and resolution
I liked.  I would recommond using an integer scaling rather than letting
the computer decide.  Start with an integer factor of 2 with one of the
smoothing options on to "round" out the notes.  The results seemed
quite acceptable for personal use, but far from publishing standards.

However, as Robin pointed out, the next set of staves are printed on
the next page, which seems to be quite a waste of paper.  Deluxe
Music has taken a simple approach to printing.  Rather than trying
to determine how far down the page it is, it simply sends a form-feed
and starts fresh on a new page.  This does prevent complaints that
part of the music was printed on one page, and the other part on the
next page.  I guess I would have liked them to have a print requestor
that lets the user say how many (groups of) staves to print on a page 
and how much blank space to print between them.  Then if my printout
overflows a page, I can blame myself for guessing wrong, but I can 
also get it right the second time.

Allen Norskog
allen_n@hpfcla.hp.com