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From: Lovstrand@EuroPARC.Xerox.COM (Lennart Lovstrand)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: questions not quite covered in the FAQ
Message-ID: <1991Jun13.232743.14082@parc.xerox.com>
Date: 13 Jun 91 23:27:43 GMT
References: <1711@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Sender: news@parc.xerox.com
Organization: Xerox PARC
Lines: 72

In article <1711@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes:
> In article <1991Jun12.183535.13255@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM
> 	(Sean Eric Fagan) writes:
> >I've been trying to make the NeXT at work talk to the other machines, namely
> >a Sun.  I tried following the documentation, but the bloody machine didn't
> >act like the doc said it would.  My problems have been with printers and
> >mail.
[...]
> >I'm running 2.0, if that makes a difference.  Has anybody got *any*
> >suggestions for what to do?  *sigh*
> 
> The stock answer to any "I can't get printing to work in 2.0"
> questions is "upgrade to 2.1"--lots and lots of buggy code was
> replaced in 2.1.  2.0 is *known* not to be able to talk to Suns.

Unfortunately, I don't think that will be enough in this case.  It sounds like  
Sean is talking about Sun's SPARCprinter.  Well, we have a couple of those as  
well.  They use Xerox print engines and rely on Sun's XNeWS server to render  
the images before shipping them out to the printer over a high speed interface.   
While they're pretty speedy in print performance (well, they should be -- we  
have them connected to 28 MIPS SPARCstation-2's!), the XNeWS PostScript  
implementation is not without problems...

We got our first NeXTcube about two months ago and while printing on an Apple  
Laserwriter worked just fine, all that our SPARCprinters would produce was a  
page full of PostScript errors.  Well, it turned out to be a bit of confusion  
over the currentshared operator.  The NeXT's 2.1 printPackage.ps will look for  
this, and if defined, call it to see if the PS interpreter is running in  
"shared virtual memory mode".  Well, it turns out that the Sun's NeWS  
interpreter has currentshared defined, but not fully implemented when used with  
their NeWSprint package (sharedvm is not defined).  The fix is to change the  
definition of currentshared in /usr/openwin/etc/NeWS/basics.ps to first test  
for sharedvm being defined before blindly calling it.  A context diff follows  
for your perusal.

We've had other problems as well, most notably with printing RTF files with  
embedded graphics and FrameMaker files with special characters from the NeXT.   
All in all, it works quite well though.  I just wished it could do double sided  
as well...  ;-)

*** basics.ps.orig	Wed Jun 27 21:17:40 1990
--- basics.ps	Thu Apr 16 20:01:32 1991
***************
*** 341,347 ****
      currentprocess /CurrentVM get
  } def
  /currentshared { % - => bool
!     currentvm sharedvm eq
  } def
  /setshared { % bool => -
      {
--- 341,354 ----
      currentprocess /CurrentVM get
  } def
  /currentshared { % - => bool
!     % Ouch, this breaks when XNeWS is used in combination with the NeWSprint
!     % package becuase sharedvm is not defined.  Normally, this is not much of
!     % a problem, but NeXT printouts will try to call currentshared if it
!     % defined.  --Lennart, 910416
!     %
!     % currentvm sharedvm eq
!     %
!     /sharedvm where {pop currentvm sharedvm eq} {false} ifelse
  } def
  /setshared { % bool => -
      {

--
--Lennart <Lovstrand@EuroPARC.Xerox.COM>		R   _A _  N_   K
Rank Xerox EuroPARC, 61 Regent St, Cambridge, UK	\/ |_ |_) | | \/
Heart-of-Gold, NeXTcube at EuroPARC, NeXT Mach 2(1)	/\ |_ | \ |_| /\
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