Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!intercon!news
From: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Put up or shut up (was Re: using parallel and serial ports)
Message-ID: <1679@intercon.com>
Date: 4 Jan 90 08:41:13 GMT
References: <4386@amelia.nas.nasa.gov> <17544@rpp386.cactus.org>
Sender: news@intercon.com
Reply-To: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation
Lines: 48

OK, Woody, I'm gonna call you on this article.  A lot of what we've been
disagreeing about is more attitude than anything else, but this is getting
ridiculous :-).  In particular [about undocumented operators in statusdict
and $printerdict]:

> One can completely alter the actions of the switches.

My, how ... useful.  Sort of like rewiring the buttons on an elevator, I
guess.  This might be useful if you could write out your new assignments
to EEPROM in some standard way (so that you could flip between AppleTalk
and 57600 baud, for example), but as it is I can't figure out any real
practical use for this...

> There are many other magical things hidden here, and some of them are
> intensely useful.

OK, I'll bite.  In several years of speaking to PostScript printers, I have
found two and only two "intensely useful" operations hiding in $printerdict,
and they're even half-documented.  They are printer-dependent, but anything
that plays with $printerdict will be by its very nature.

The first operation is to define a new page-size procedure that calls
framedevice to make the page frame buffer smaller, thus allowing more memory
for things like font storage.  For example, reducing the frame buffer to 5.5
by 8.5 inches (which just happens :-) to be the size of a normal half-size
manual page), you end up with almost 700K of free VM on a LaserWriter, which
means you can permanently load in 16 or so more Adobe fonts that you usually
can.  In order to make this work right, you need to look at the
definition for an existing page size in order to get the arguments to
"frametoprinter" or "frametoroket" right, but this is hardly "magic."

The second is to invoke resident printer emulators (such as the Diablo 630
emulator in a LW, or the HPLJ emulators in some other printers) under program
control (and even better, over AppleTalk).  Once again, sometimes useful
but hardly magic.

I challenge you to come up with a single other "intensely useful" capability
that you can get by using your "magical" operators, and post the code to
do it.  If so, I'll post my page resizing code, just to be fair.  Even if
you don't want to post code, for fear of losing consulting money, I'd just
honestly like to know what "many things" you think are so nifty...

I don't mean to flame at you, Woody, it's just that the more you post,
the more I wonder whether you work with the same PostScript that I do :-).

Amanda Walker
InterCon Systems Corporation
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