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From: bruceb@amiga.UUCP (Bruce Barrett)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Patch for Epson ?X-80 printers
Message-ID: <644@amiga.amiga.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 14:03:38 EST
Article-I.D.: amiga.644
Posted: Tue Feb  4 14:03:38 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 05:05:52 EST
References: <1155@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> <1079@utcs.uucp>
Reply-To: bruceb@hunter.UUCP (Bruce Barrett)
Organization: Commodore-Amiga Inc., 983 University Ave #D, Los Gatos CA 95030
Lines: 33

In article <1079@utcs.uucp> wagner@utcs.UUCP (Michael Wagner) writes:
 (regarding epson printer bugs)
>The third (I suppose this could be a "feature") is that there doesn't
>seem to be any difference between draft and letter quality mode.  I 
>expected ...
The way the ASCII printer drivers were written they take advantage of the
functions supported by the printer, they (almost??) never add features.
So... If your printer has draft and letter quality modes then your output
will too.
>
>Incidentally, does anyone know why the translation to printer-specific
>codes is done by code rather than tables+some interpretive code?  
Most of the printer driver is done using table lookup.  The code part
was (I beleive) necessary for some of the more complex sequences,...
Especially graphics rendering.

>Also, why doesn't any
>available software spawn printer tasks and let me get back to my work?
A very good question!  On a few of the products I am familiar with the
specs say they must run in a 256k machine.  An extra task for printing,
the memory the print driver takes and making sure you don't modify the
object you are printing all would add to the memory requirements.  I think
either:
	a) a product should detect that it has lots of room and multi-task
		itself
or	b) the 256k limiting spec should be dropped (in some cases).
Please note in many cases (not Textcraft) you can run 2 copies of a program,
print with one, work with the other (far from elegant but nicer than some
machines).

Disclaimer:
	If my opinions were those of Commodore things might be different,
but then again might not.