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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
From: keithd@cadovax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Moronic printer drivers
Message-ID: <1366@cadovax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Jan-87 15:20:12 EST
Article-I.D.: cadovax.1366
Posted: Wed Jan 28 15:20:12 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Jan-87 04:26:43 EST
References: <4175@videovax.Tek.COM>
Reply-To: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Organization: Contel Business Systems, Torrance, CA
Lines: 131
Keywords: slow, slower, slowest

In article <4175@videovax.Tek.COM> stever@videovax.Tek.COM (Steven E. Rice, P.E.) writes:
>There is one fly in the ointment, though.  When we have selected "JX-80"
>in Preferences, the output is agonizingly slow!!!  On each line, the
>printer driver insists on printing the full width of the paper for each
>color, even if nothing is to be printed on that line!  Of course, the
>printer has to cycle the (multistripe) ribbon up and down with each
>color, so it takes five to ten seconds per line.

AHA!  Other people HAVE been having problems.  A friend and I have been
exploring some of the printer problems, and are thoroughly confused.  We
have learned a few things, but am not sure where many of the problems lie.
They can either be in:

   1) The printer driver for the particular printer
   2) The printer.device
   3) The application doing the printing

We have been testing on two types of printers basically, a Canon1080a color
ink-jet, and an Epson LQ-800 24 pin high quality dot matrix printer.  Neither
printers were in the original Amiga preferences, all drivers were obtained
from Compu$erve.  We have the source to the LQ-800 driver, but not to the
Canon driver.

We've tested printers with 5 packages that are of note:

   1) Dpaint I
   2) Dpaint II
   3) DeluxePrint
   4) NotePad
   5) PageSetter

Here are some of the things we've found:

   1) The slowest APPLICATION is DeluxePrint.  Here is where we get the
      30+ minuite print times when using the LQ-800 which has in the NLQ
      mode, which provides 1440 dots horizontally.  It takes a good 30
      seconds a line.  The LQ-800 prints a page in around 10-12 minuites
      worst case with most of the other programs (except PageSetter which
      also tends to the 30+ print minutes per page).

   2) The applications are apparently doing their own re-sampling (I use
      this term to mean 're-sizing' the image by 'doubling-up' pixel lines
      horizontally and/or vertically or 'dropping-out' such lines in order
      to make the image fit the paper 'correctly'.

      Each application seems to be re-sampling DIFFERENTLY.  Of all the
      packages mentioned, only DPaint II can be configured so that the
      re-sampling dosen't affect text output objectionably.  All the rest
      you see a tendency for some letters to be 'thicker' than the same letter
      elsewhere on the page.  This is because some vertical lines are 'doubled-
      up' and others are not, to make the image wider on the page.

   3) NotePad sizes, 'Small, Medium, and Large' and Auto-Size seem to do
      different things with respect to size depending on the printer driver
      and current setting of preference margins.  I can't get Auto-Size to
      work AT ALL with the Canon1080a driver I'm using, it just comes back
      as if it was done, with no errors and no printout.  With the LQ-800
      used with the standard Amiga-supplied Epson driver, 'Small, Medium,
      and Large' are all pretty gigantic.

   4) The 'preferences' left and right margins do affect the different packages
      're-sampling', but differently with every package.  If I find a good 
      setting for one package, other packages work differently, and may have
      different optimal settings.

      I've setup a test graphic, a DPaint I lo-res screen that has a bunch of
      single pixel vertical black lines seperated by single pixel white lines
      at the top edge of the graphic, and the same pattern horizontally at the
      left edge of the graphic.  Using the Canon driver, I have to set the
      right margin to any number above about 85 in order to eliminate the
      re-sampling effect and thereby get clean lines with no 'extra' lines
      or lines missing.  Any number above 85, up to 250 or so (which I've
      tested) acts all the same.  No variations whatsoever.  Unfortunately,
      with the Canon, DPaint I will try to adjust the vertical aspect to fit
      the screen h/v aspect ratio, and won't allow me to get an image that
      dosen't replicate or remove horizontal lines, thereby producing
      thick horizontal lines at periodic intervals.

      With PageSetter or the NotePad, I can't get the horizontal size to 
      work at all without ugly 'thick' vertical lines at various intervals.
      With NotePad, I'll pick a font, do a bunch of H's , and find that
      some of the verticals are thicker than others throughout a line. 
      I've tried setting the right margin all over the place, and though
      it does change where the thick and thin lines are, I can't seem to
      find a setting that outputs all H's uniformly.  I can't get PageSetter
      to do this very well either.

      I've only done a cursory test of the screen dumper program with my
      test graphic.  It looks like this might work better, but I really don't
      know yet.  At any rate, it won't help me to print PageSetter documents
      correctly anyway.


Personally, I sure wish these packages would allow me to disable any 
resampling at all, and take the hit in the aspect ratio and size.  Shit,
I can size it with a Xerox if I need to, I just can't stand the idiotic
looking text when random horizontal and vertical lines are being replicated.

And, it sure is a pain to try to 'cancel' a print job, most of these programs
(except Dpaint II) don't provide a print cancel option.  It would seem
reasonable to provide this within the printer.device or the OS somewhere
since obviously the Application writers aren't doing it. (Kill -9 anyone?)

So what the hell is going on here?  What can a printer driver do to help
fix any of these problems?  What can a printer driver be doing that can
cause Auto-Size on the Notepad to do nothing?

I've tried patching the DPI on my driver, and do get some changes, but
I don't know how to figure out what I really need to set it to to get
what I want (and that's text that dosen't look like SHIT).  The RKM implies
that these numbers need to be set to whatever the real DPI of the printer
is, but that dosen't correspond to what the application is going to do
with it, and usually screws up the output.

The Canon has 640 dots horizontally.  Sound familiar?  No matter WHICH
application I use, if it's dumping something that was created on the
screen, it OUGHT to be able to do it without 'doubling' up vertical lines
at random intervals trying to make it 'fit' the page.  And though the
Canon vertical DPI is not the same as the horizontal DPI, if I patch the
driver to MAKE them the same, I ought to get no horizontal double-lines
if I'm getting no vertical ones, but that is not the case.  I'd rather
stretch the image slightly vertically and not suffer re-sampling distortion
than get a 100% correct aspect ratio MOST OF THE TIME.

So ok, Commodore, you laid off your printer driver expert.  So what are
you going to do NOW?  What are the rest of us going to do NOW?


Keith Doyle
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