Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!apple!portal!sv!news From: leonardr@svc.portal.com (Leonard Rosenthol) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm Subject: Re: Pass Through Printing (was Re: MacTerminal 3.0) Message-ID: <1990Nov1.015733.14975@svc.portal.com> Date: 1 Nov 90 01:57:33 GMT References: <24@uarthur.UUCP> <11039@goofy.Apple.COM> <1990Oct31.012421.12492@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: news@svc.portal.com Reply-To: leonardr@svc.portal.com (Leonard Rosenthol) Organization: Software Ventures Corporation. Lines: 48 In article , amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) writes: > [stuff removed from brevity] > > The problems stem from the fact that printers are not accessed the same > way on a Macintosh the way that they are on a PC or a CRT terminal. > Boy is that an understatement if I ever heard one!! > On a Macintosh, a printer is just another place you can draw. Also, with > the current printing architecture, the Print Manager really wants you to > draw whole documents (or at least pages) at once. This is great for most > Mac printing, but it poses a problem when you want to do pass-through. > There are three basic approaches, each of which works for some applications > and not others. The two easiest ones are, in a sense, cheating, IMHO :), > but they do provide what many people want. > > 1. Forget the print manager. You actually forgot one - which is a variant of this, and what MicroPhone II does - and that is to use the Low Level Text Streaming interface of the Print Manager. This has the advantage that it works with printers such as Appletalk Imagewriters and Laserwriters, but doesn't work with other third party printers, like the DeskWriter, which don't support this interface. The other problem with using this is that Apple has tried REAL HARD to not keep this compatible with current stuff - and has guarenteed that in the future when the 'New Printing Architecture' arrives (post 7.0) this stuff will have gone bye-bye. > 2. Spool the document and print it all at once. This can also be modified to do such things as print every page (or at FF's), or don't print until MANUALLY told to, or whatever. We are investigating such spooling options for future MPII's in order to maintain compatibility with the future. HOWEVER, the biggest problem with doing this is that a file on disk (or in memory) is _NOT_ the same as a printer and that should the host send printer command codes or control sequences there is no good way to interpret these by your spooler. This means that you can solve SOME problems, but not all of them - and those hosts which like to do lots of printer manipulation will not work with this method. > 3. Guess what the user wants and Do The Right Thing. In my mind, the 'Right Thing' is for Apple to understand that if Communications and Connectivity are a concern for them, that giving developers the ability to 'stream text' just like a terminal should also be considered. -- Leonard Rosenthol Software Ventures Corp. MicroPhone II Development Team