Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!midway!ellis.uchicago.edu!lair
From: lair@ellis.uchicago.edu (Scott A. Laird)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Why won't Windows print?
Summary: Windows 3.0 doesn't want to print with more than 156 or so soft fonts.
Message-ID: <1991Apr28.203109.9185@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 28 Apr 91 20:31:09 GMT
Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (NewsMistress)
Followup-To: comp.windows.ms
Organization: University of Chicago
Lines: 45

I'm having a problem printing with Windows.  I installed most (all?) of the 
ATM fonts from cica, and added the .pfb's to the softfont entries in win.ini,
but the postscript driver refuses to print when the number of softfonts being
used is greater then about 156.  If I erase #140, for instance, I can raise
the softfonts= line one higher than before, and it will still work, but if
I go one higher than that it will fail.

The symptoms are easiest to observe in WfW, where setting the softfonts line
too high causes it to grey the Print... option and refuse to show _any_ fonts
in the font selector in the ribbon.  Pagemaker and Excel will let me select 
print, but give me an error saying that they can't open the printer driver.
All of those go away when I set the softfont= line to less than 156.  I read
the manual (or at least the index -- it has nothing to say that I could see,
but I checked out everything that seemed relevant.)  I read the help files
for WfW and the Postscript driver.  I read the printers.txt file and the
two winini?.txt files.  Nothing. 

I'm using windows 3.0 (not 3.0a) with ATM 1.1, WfW 1.1, version 3.4a of the 
postscript driver from cica, and a total of about 240 ATM fonts.

When I set windows to print to my Epson LQ-850, everything is fine, and it will
print with no errors.  It refuses to work with the Postscript printer no matter
what I do.  Since the printer (an Apple Laserwriter IINTX) is a network 
printer, I tried redirecting the output to my Epson, where I could at least
get postscript code to look at, and that doesn't do it either.  I even 
uninstalled ATM (by setting the system= line in sys.ini to system.drv) but
it made no difference.
 
The only thing I can do to get it to work is to lower the number of installed
softfonts.  Do I really have to erase half my fonts to get Windows to print,
or is there something I'm missing?  If the number was 128 or 256 I could at 
least see where that would be a driver problem, but 156?

Since I haven't seen anyone else with this problem, and I'm sure that _someone_
else has tried installing all of the fonts and printing to a Postscript
printer, it seems that the problem should be something other than a bad driver.
I tried it with the old (3.3) driver and it was the same.  If anyone can help,
please either send me email or post, I'll see it.  Thanks!


-- 
Scott A. Laird            |  Any semblance of the above to anything is purely
lair@midway.uchicago.edu  |  coincidental, as it was the result of an infinite
The University of Chicago |  number of monkeys sneaking in to use my computer 
                          |  for the afternoon.