Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!uw-entropy!king
From: king@entropy.ms.washington.edu (Jim King)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Chooser Strangeness
Message-ID: <696@entropy.ms.washington.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 88 22:35:14 GMT
References: <2470@im4u.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: UW MathStat, Seattle
Lines: 55
Keywords: features and bugs
Summary: Why not a PS option in the Chooser?

In article <2470@im4u.UUCP>, suhler@im4u.UUCP (Paul A. Suhler) writes:
> I'd talked to an Apple engineer about how the Chooser refuses to
> turn on AppleTalk after the ImageWriter has been used without a
> reboot in between.  I think that his comments apply to a previous
> poster's comments about '0's at the start and end of lines after
> switching from LW to IW.  (I'd seen it, too.)
> 
> He said that the Chooser does not re-initialize the serial port;
> that's only done at reboot or startup time.  He said that Apple
> intended for you to use only one kind of device on the serial
> port in between reboots.
> 
> Hey, Apple, this is a bug!  I have a modem on the modem port,
> an IW on the printer port, and I like to be able to hop into
> LW to create PostScript files for uploading.  Any chance of a fix?
 
Yes it is a bug and an annoying one, but creating a PostScript file
is done in an absurd manner anyway.  Maybe this is a good time to
propose a more user-friendly method for generating Postscript files.  
The cryptic clover-key method is a real pain; it is easy to forget 
and impossible for new users to guess (sounds like another well-known 
brand of PC!).  It also gives your file a dumb name.

Why not have a "printer driver" accessible from the Chooser (like the
Glue software) that if chosen would save a Postscript file instead of
really printing.  

There should then be a dialog box so you can name the PostScript
file and so you could check whether you wanted the header file
prepended or not.

Alternatively, there could be a PS option in the Print Dialog box.
But there should be some visible Mac-like way of generating a
PostScript file.  And there seems to be no reason at all that such an
option should depend on the state of the serial port, since the stuff
is not going to the serial port anyway.

Is it possible to write a CDEV that will do this without waiting for
Apple?

> Thanks.
> -- 
> Paul Suhler        suhler@im4u.UTEXAS.EDU	512-474-9517/471-3903

Jim King

uucpnet address:   uw-beaver!uw-entropy!king
Internet (arpanet) address:    king@entropy.ms.washington.edu
Bitnet address: 
king%entropy.ms.washington.edu@beaver.cs.washington.edu

James King
Dept of Math
Univ of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195