Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!gitpyr!byron From: byron@pyr.gatech.EDU (Byron A Jeff) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: blasting bitmaps (was Re: How did they make the printer so cheap?) Message-ID: <6616@pyr.gatech.EDU> Date: 20 Oct 88 13:24:41 GMT References: <5807@zodiac.UUCP> <24895@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <533@gt-eedsp.UUCP> <41087@linus.UUCP> <73489@sun.uucp> <7049@ut-emx.UUCP> <25141@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <40784@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Reply-To: byron@pyr.UUCP (Byron A Jeff) Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology Lines: 46 In article <40784@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky) writes: -I have a dumb question. Why does anybody bother to send complete -bitmaps to laser printers, especially 2M bitmaps? wouldn't it be -trivial to compress them for tranmission using ZLW or such? I'll bet -you could get 90% compression or more for plain text. surely the time -saved in transmission would pay for the compression time, especially -if compression is implemented in hardware. Not to mention the savings -in ethernet traffic on networks. It's already been stated that the remote print servers will send postscript to the machine with the printer and that machine creates the bitmap. Software compression can be performed on both ends if you wish. In fact the DSP chip can perform the operation without bothering the '030 much at all. Also the printer is assigned it's own DMA channel. The amount of data being sent to printer doesn't slow the processor down at all. And at 3M/sec (is this right?) for 400dpi bitmaps on an 8ppm printer I don't think the size of the bitmaps is a bottleneck. Is the "best" solution to have a real postcript printer that has it's own DMA channel? Of course the price of that printer will at least double the price of the printer. Aren't tradeoffs wonderful? Compression requires smarts on the part of the printer which increases the cost. And since the print engine is the bottleneck you get no increase in print speed by doing so. 400dpi @ $2000 is absolutely nothing to complain about. I think the current setup was a great idea. It's not necessary to outthink the bitmap size, just outrun it. If anything a faster printer would have been a nice. Do any current laser printer engines run faster than 8ppm? How much do they cost? - -+----------------+---------------------------------------------------+ -| Joel Spolsky | bitnet: spolsky@yalecs uucp: ...!yale!spolsky | -| | arpa: spolsky@yale.edu voicenet: 203-436-1483 | -+----------------+---------------------------------------------------+ - #include -- Another random extraction from the mental bit stream of... Byron A. Jeff Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332 Internet: byron@pyr.gatech.edu uucp: ...!gatech!pyr!byron