Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhb!hpsmtc1!swh
From: swh@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Steve Harrold)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: detecting loaded soft fonts on the HP laserjet series II
Message-ID: <11470035@hpsmtc1.HP.COM>
Date: 18 Jul 88 16:25:40 GMT
References: <245@psuhcx.psu.edu>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 35

Re: Detecting presence of soft fonts in HP LaserJet

I, too, use a LJ that is shared among several people, and am always
wondering if the font I downloaded an hour ago is still there or not.

My research indicated that there is no way to know for sure what is still
loaded in the printer, and, especially, there is no way of knowing if it
has been powrered down since the last time I used it.  The LJ does not
have an escape sequence like "query font status" or any other status-like
command.  This is true even for the "big daddy" LaserJet 2000.

The best I have been able to do is to mark the downloaded soft font as
"permanent" so that people doing reset escape sequences don't wipe me out.
The escape sequence  "ESC *c#F" will achieve this, where the "#" is the 
ID if a previously downloaded font.

Now, if enough people do this for their particular fonts, the LJ memory
will fill up leaving no room for macros and graphics.  The immediate response
is to powerdown/powerup the machine to clear its memory, and your 
subterfuge is eliminated (sadly).

Have you considered getting your group together and agreeing on a standard
set of fonts and associated font IDs?  If you all decide what font ID to use 
for each font, then, when you load the fonts as needed, you won't glut the LJ
memory with multiple copies of the same font.  Then, there will be more
useful memory to go around and fewer occasions where the poweroff/on
technique is resorted to.

Hope these observations help.

--
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Steve Harrold			...hplabs!hpsmtc1!swh
				HPG200/13
				(408) 447-5580
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