Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!whuts!whutt!dbk
From: dbk@whutt.UUCP (PFENDER)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Troubles with Lattice C, Part I: legal, licensing, upgrade
Summary: Summary of Amiga->Postscript file->Laserwriter in Mac network
Keywords: Need to print Amiga wp files on Appl*talk-networked Laserwriter
Message-ID: <3830@whutt.UUCP>
Date: 23 Aug 88 17:11:17 GMT
References: <3706@bsu-cs.UUCP> <549@ardent.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 53

This is a quick summary of what I found out, since there appear to be others
out there who have a similar problem to solve.  Thank you to all who wrote,
both on the net and through e-mail.  If I get a chance I'll try to reply to
your individual replies.

This was the problem.  Take files generated by an Amiga word-processing pro-
gram and print them on an Apple Laserwriter that was hooked into a Macintosh
cluster (Appl*talk).  I had assumed that one would not want to madden the
users of the Macintosh cluster by temporarily disconnecting the printer from
the net and reconnecting it to one's Amiga (which one would have bodily trans-
ported to the Macintosh cluster), but this would indeed be the simplest 
solution, assuming you had the proper cables to connect your Amiga to the
RS232 port on the printer.

The solution I looked for ran like this:  

	Generate a postscript file from your text file.  Some word proces-
sors like Excellence and WordPerfect seem to be capable of this directly
simply by redirecting the output from PAR: or SER: to a FILE.  For other
word processors, it may be necessary to modify the printer driver so that
it prints to a FILE, while to the word processor, it still looks like print-
ing is going on.  Although this is certainly possible, I did not collect 
much detail in this department.

	The next step, once the postscript file has been generated, is to
transfer the file to the Macintosh cluster, presumably by uploading it to
an intermediate machine and then to the Mac cluster, or directly to the
Mac cluster.

	Once the file has been received by a Macintosh in the cluster, and
saved on disk, it can be dumped over the Appl*talk network to the Laser-
writer using a program such as SendPS 1.21 or PSDump (?).  And there you
have it.

While several people admitted to using a scheme akin to this one, and to 
being perfectly happy with it, others pointed out that this involves a lot
of hacking.  (Simply following the steps outlined here will probably NOT
suffice.)  Furthermore, the commercial programs for the Macintosh (word
processing and drafting, though perhaps not painting) tend to be more
capable, dependable and smoother-working.  Therefore, whatever the lure of
the Amiga, if you need a dependable, works-right-out-of-the-box system,
this is not the way to do it.

Comments are welcome.  Please, however, direct religious comments comparing
any facet of the Mac/Amiga systems to another series (such as Mac II bashing).

These opinions and "fax" are my own.  My employers are in no way responble for
me!

|--------------------Insert time-consuming, masterful-------------------------|
			     signature here

			     (David Knudsen)