Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!YALE.ARPA!LEICHTER-JERRY From: LEICHTER-JERRY@YALE.ARPA Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: Re: accounting and $GETs from source Message-ID: <8705281909.AA20680@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Thu, 28-May-87 15:38:42 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8705281909.AA20680 Posted: Thu May 28 15:38:42 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 30-May-87 08:17:36 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 28 At the end of an excellent discussion of printer accounting, David Bolthouse comments: Has anyone any ideas how we're ever going to handle accounting for printers that understand page-description languages (i.e., PostScript)? Page by page seems easiest, but I don't know if that's possible. Just a random, passing thought... To expand: It's exactly because it's been clear for several years now that this class of printer was the wave of the future that the default accounting stuff in the symbiont is so limited. If your model of a printer is that it's kind of a fast terminal, then counting line feeds or page feeds or even the total number of bytes makes sense. But modern printers are much more complicated than that, and trying to understand just what printer X is going to do with data stream Y can be very complex. There is no simple correlation between any of the obvious measures of the input file with the amount of output produced - a short Postscript program can produce an infinite amount of output. Ultimately, only the printer itself is able to judge what resources it has used - whether "resources" should include paper, lines, time, or whatever - and it will have to be the printer that calculates the charges. I've heard mention - perhaps on INFO-LASER - of Postscript programs to do just that. They would have to be used in conjunction with symbionts that knew how to ask the printer for this information and then add it to the accounting records. -- Jerry -------