Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!att!poseidon!psrc
From: psrc@poseidon.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: printing on the NeXt machine.
Summary: print server doesn't see a heavy load
Message-ID: <545@poseidon.ATT.COM>
Date: 24 Oct 88 03:43:08 GMT
References: <41087@linus.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 41

<"He seemed like such a nice man . . . and then he turned out to be a writer!">

In article <41087@linus.UUCP>, sid@linus.UUCP (Sid Stuart) writes:
> In a shared environment though, it is unlikely that one would want
> to go to the expense of having a $2,000 printer on each computer.

Agreed.

> It is also unlikely that one would want to blast bitmaps over the
> ethernet to the machine with the NeXT printer on it.

Yes, probably.

> And it is unlikely that one would want to burden one computer on the
> net with the task of generating the bitmaps.

Not so!  NeXT *must* have come up with a quick way of generating
bitmaps from Postscript.  If they haven't, the whole box'll be a dog,
and they're dead (and this whole group goes away in a year).  If they
have, then what you've just described isn't much of a "burden".

> Simply tie your favorite Postscript printer onto one of the NeXT
> machines through the serial port and SHAZAM!, it's the same thing we
> have been doing all along, only easier.

And more expensive (if, as I've said, making a system do double duty as
a print server is plausible), and slower (serial connection at 9.6Kbps
plus Postscript interpretation by at most a 68020, vs. DMA and
Postscript interpretation by some part of a 68030 plus the "mainframe
on a chip").

>sid@linus
> 
> ps.  Several of the above words are trademarked. It is left as an exercise
> for the reader to recognize which are.

What he said.

Paul S. R. Chisholm, psrc@poseidon.att.com (formerly psc@lznv.att.com)
AT&T Bell Laboratories, att!poseidon!psrc, AT&T Mail !psrchisholm
I'm not speaking for the company, I'm just speaking my mind.