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From: lippin@herb-ox.berkeley.edu (The Apathist)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Page Rectangles (Reply part two)
Message-ID: <1990Oct10.204910.9685@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 10 Oct 90 20:49:10 GMT
References: <6156@ethz.UUCP> <1990Oct9.035859.10254@agate.berkeley.edu> <10641@goofy.Apple.COM>
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Recently casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) wrote:
>In article <1990Oct9.035859.10254@agate.berkeley.edu> 
>lippin@wish-bone.berkeley.edu (The Apathist) writes:
>
>> How about a PrGeneral verb which gives the printer driver a slap on
>> the wrist and instructs it to tell the truth?
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by "the truth."  The page rectangle that the 
>driver returns is in fact the bounding rectangle for the area that will be 
>printed on.  You want some other rectangle?  What should it be?

Apparently, I was misled by Sean Parent's letter into believing that
several of Apple's printer drivers miscalculate the page rectangle --
that the printable area is in fact larger than the drivers report.

Sean also wrote that it would be impractical to fix the bug, as many
existing documents would need to be reformatted.  I suggested this
PrGeneral verb as way to avoid making the programs of the future pay
for the bugs of the past.

To keep old programs running, the Macintosh OS has kept many quirks
which have become hindrances or pitfalls for newer programs (file
version numbers and the poor man's search path come to mind).  I was
hoping to (partially) avoid another such feature.

					--Tom Lippincott
					  lippin@math.berkeley.edu

    "No problem is insoluble goiven a big enough plastic bag."
					--Tom Stoppard, _Jumpers_