Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!brunix!omh From: omh@cs.brown.edu (Owen M. Hartnett) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Low level printing redux Message-ID: <55473@brunix.UUCP> Date: 6 Nov 90 01:14:41 GMT References: <55319@brunix.UUCP> <11106@goofy.Apple.COM> Sender: news@brunix.UUCP Reply-To: omh@cs.brown.edu (Owen M. Hartnett) Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science Lines: 63 In article <11106@goofy.Apple.COM> casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) writes: >In article <55319@brunix.UUCP> omh@cs.brown.edu (Owen M. Hartnett) writes: >> For some reason, the low level print calls for bitmaps will refuse to >print >> more than about 7 1/2" on a page horizontally. >> >> The QUESTION: Do you know how to 1) change the clipping region in the low >> level driver to be larger or 2) Using the low level calls, specify the >> paper size which controls this clipping? > >The low-level interface was designed to provide a minimal model of >printing, so it uses a fixed clipping rectangle, chosen to make printing >work on as many paper sizes as possible. > You mean work on as many paper sizes as possible, so long as they're 8 1/2 x 11? Since you're sending a bitmap out to a printer, wouldn't it make sense to allow the bitmap to extend the same amount as the printhead can? You've got a wide carriage printer here and you figure you can print like a wide carriage printer, but no. Don't mean to be flippant but it doesn't make sense to me and it seems like someone made a boo-boo. >So the bad news is that 1) you can't change the clipping except by owning >the source code, changing it, and recompiling, and 2) you can't set the >paper size using the low-level interface. > Hmmm... If I could find that rectangle and Fedit it... >The good news is you can just use the high-level interface instead. It >costs you very little to do so; the low-level interface is no longer the >necessity that it once was (on 128K Macs) and is supported only to keep >older applications working. > The high-level interface costs me a lot in terms of speed. I need to print about 6,000 copies of a pre-printed form which is 17" long and 11" wide from information kept in a Macintosh database. Since most of the form is straight text, I can just send this out as text in the printer's native font and get a tremendous increase in speed. The part of the form that is graphics I write to a bitmap and then zap out that part as a bitmap dump, then continue with text at the bottom. Works pretty good except it clips the righthand 3 inches. Well, I know what I have to do: send the printer the control codes as ASCII text so it will expect a bitmap and zap it out that way. However, this will make it printer dependent. You know, Apple really needs a printer that can output a lot of data *fast* We've got 100Meg hard disk drives going for $500 bucks now and business types like me are going to want to have some way to output some of that data. If you *really* want to penetrate the business world you have to provide a printer that means business. -Owen - Business Printing Evangelist of the Net >David Casseres > Exclaimer: Hey! Owen Hartnett omh@cs.brown.edu.CSNET Brown University Computer Science omh@cs.brown.edu uunet!brunix!omh "Don't wait up for me tonight because I won't be home for a month."