laser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/30/85)
From: Alan Crosswell <US.ALAN@CU20B.ARPA> My copy of Inside LaserWriter just showed up and it's well worth the $75. You get a copy of the Adobe PostScript manual as well as the LaserWriter and Mac-specific stuff like: You can get a copy of the PostScript file that gets sent to the LaserWriter by selecting Print and holding down command-F immediately after clicking OK from the dialog box. Keep holding command-F down until an alert appears that says something like "Creating Postscript file". A file named Postscript is created with the postscript code (don't forget to rename it before doing command-F the next time). This file will not print on it's own; It relies on some postscript definitions loaded into the printer from the "Laser Prep" resource file. You can, however, edit the postscript file and print it over appletalk with a program that comes with the manual. It comes with two floppies -- more screen fonts for all the variations on a font family (i.e. Times Roman Bold, etc.) and a couple of programs - one to print PostScript files and another which is the runnable version of a sample program from the manual. It also documents all those "secret" things in the /statusdict dictionary and also warns that the EEROM wears out after about 10,000 writes. You only write to it to set things like the printer name (default LaserWriter) and default power-up values for baud rate on the serial ports. Talking about the serial ports... when in RS-232 mode (switch set to 1200/9600 and maybe special), both the DB-25 and DB-9 ports are active and can both be spooled to. The LaserWriter listens to whichever port gets the first character in while buffering input from the other (and sending an XOFF, I assume). Using this feature, you can very easily share a LaserWriter between two RS-232 sources. When it gets a ^D (end of job indication), it will then start a job from the other port if there is work waiting. Either port can send a ^T at any time and get back a status message. The baud rate and parity of the 9600 and special switch settings are also changeable (one of the things you might want to write into EEROM). Disclaimer - I am basing most of the above on a quick reading of the manual; I haven't tried any of this stuff with the exception of creating a Postscript file from MacDraw with the command-F trick. Alan Crosswell Columbia University -------