Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Printing Example Code
Keywords: mac printing is a pain in the petute
Message-ID: <6987@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 13 Apr 89 20:51:45 GMT
References: <451@biar.UUCP> <28839@apple.Apple.COM> <4012@ece-csc.UUCP>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 32

In article <4012@ece-csc.UUCP> jnh@ece-csc.UUCP (Joseph Nathan Hall) writes:
>Actually, I never thought printing was all that bad, especially if you go
>to the trouble of keeping your displays in pictures ...

Ever tried to print a large PICT file?  You can't use the approach from
the Tech Note, because installing your own QuickDraw bottleneck for
GetPICTData will interfere with the Printing manager's bottlenecks.
You have to draw into an offscreen bitmap and then draw that into the
page port.  What a pain.  You can't even allocate a bitmap big enough
in many cases, so you have to break the bitmap into bands and draw
repeatedly into each band.

And yes, the Print Manager is a mess overall.  Fortunately, Apple does
seem to realize this and will probably improve it some day.  That's why
they won't document what print drivers are supposed to do (and why Joel
West's Palomar Software is doing such a good business in providing
developers with print drivers....)

>I dunno, this isn't
>nearly as difficult as dealing with the low-level File Manager routines.
>For example, if you want to read a text file, using the newline flag
>(reported to exist and occasionally mentioned in the documentation)...

Why would you want to do that?  Can you say "slow"?  Surely reading a
text file in a block-by-block way is not beyond the skills of a
professional programmer!  Remember, the key to speed is to read in
as much as possible into the largest buffer possible.  If you follow
this rule, the actual code calling the File Manager is nearly trivial.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim
"There are no Famous People on the net.  Only some of us with bigger mouths
 than others."  -- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, The Roach