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From: olson@endor.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Slow Laserwriter Halftones?
Message-ID: <1523@husc6.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Mar-87 13:41:02 EST
Article-I.D.: husc6.1523
Posted: Mon Mar 30 13:41:02 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Mar-87 07:24:34 EST
References: <203@ndmath.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.UUCP
Reply-To: olson@endor.UUCP (Eric Olson)
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab Harvard, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 24

In article <203@ndmath.UUCP> milo@ndmath.UUCP (Greg Corson) writes:
>Recently, I got a program which takes a data file with an 8-bit greyscale
>picture in it, converts it and downloads it to a laserwriter for halftone
>output.  The program was called "halftone".
>
>I have a little problem though...the program seems a lot slower than it should
>be.  It takes about 20 minutes to get a halftone of a 420x320 (130K) file, 
>larger files take up to an hour.  For some reason this doesn't seem right since
>the program only has to send some postscript "image" operator setup commands
>then a copy of the datafile.  It seems like transfering a 130k file shouldn't
>take more than a few minutes at Appletalk speed (the Mac and LaserWriter are
>the only things on the cable).

There's more than one way to print a greyscale.  Some programs (like greypaint)
actually image the greyscale into a bitmap, and download that.  Look at
the output of Halftone by holding F after clicking OK in the print dialog
(this creates the file PostScript in the current directory).

I have been printing many 4-bit 512 X 512 images on a LaserWriter Plus: they
take about 1.5 minutes to image and print.  I tried an 8 bit image too, and
it wasn't a lot slower.  I think the older Laserwriter (which has an older
PostScript interpreter) is a little slower, but not as much as you have found.

-Eric