laser-lovers@uw-beaver (12/13/84)
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@uw-beaver.arpa
Has anybody attempted to estimate the complexity limits on LaserJet
raster graphics? There is supposed to be 59KB of memory there, but
there is obviously some sort of overhead in its use. I have a test
files, consisting of lots of little rectangular patches of raster,
which totals only 44KB and nevertheless blows the limit. Note that
44KB is the bytes actually being fed to the LaserJet, including all
the control-sequence garbage needed to pass raster data. So the
actual raster data is substantially less, perhaps 35KB total. There
is only graphics on this page, no text.
Alas, when the LaserJet runs out of raster memory, it does not break
things cleanly so you can cut-and-paste. For one thing, it needs manual
intervention to continue -- you have to push the "continue" button to
acknowledge that you realize there's something wrong. (Seems a bit
silly, actually; it would be nicer if the thing just carried on.) And
while the black parts on the first and second pages do add up to the
picture you want, they aren't split along a straight line. For one
thing, the split is jagged. For another, it's not a single dividing
line. At one point, where a diagonal line crossed the boundary, I got
most of the line, a gap, and then a little dash of continuation; on the
second page, I got another dash to fill the gap, and then the rest of
the line! For those of you who can't visualize this, here's a horizontal
version of it:
first page --------------------------- ---
second page ---- ----------------
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry