info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (11/08/84)
From: (Neil Groundwater [stug]) npg@lbl-csam
We have some fair-size Multiplan sheets and have had printing problems
other users should avoid. Our sheets had lots of rows and columns,
added and multiplied here and there, but frankly nothing too fancy.
The sheets were for forecasting employee salary, benefits, overhead,
etc. The total size is about six pages. Blank lines throughout
for readability and all. BUT IT WON'T PRINT! The sheet is not
too big as far as Multiplan is concerned, but it (silently) refuses
to print. Oh, the disk makes creative whirring noises for up to an
hour before we turn Mac off to put it out of its misery, but nary
a beep from the Imagewriter.
We got through to someone at Microsoft at the phone number in the
Multiplan documentation and he blamed the Mac. He said that sheets
larger than 30K bytes (ours was 38K) may not print. The obvious
solution (?) was to break our sheet up into three sheets (so we have
growth room), LINK the three to a fourth, and then have page two of
the new sheet add together the three linked lines which are on page
one. (you multiplan users will recall that you cannot enter links
directly into equations. they must appear in cells and then the
local equation can refer to the cells).
A roundabout workaround.
Why doesn't Multiplan (a) warn you, (b) complain, (c) recognize
that it's in a printer loop, or (d) do it right.
I have done some looking through my Inside Mac and notes like the
15" imagewriter stuff. Indeed, Mac has some problems with
printfiles which are too big. I haven't been able to crash it
at "the right" time to catch it with a big print-file though.
It has been zero-length. Apple warns developers to "look"
at the print-file for redundant info, but that's out of my
league for now.
It seems that a printfile for a spreadsheet should NOT be very
complex! It should be able to generate it as easily as updating
the screen when you scroll - it's the same info, isn't it?
By the way, it makes no difference whether we ask for draft,
standard, or high-res. Neither does "selecting" a portion of the
sheet - it just GOES AWAY.
Microsoft and Apple are probably pointing some fingers at each
other on this one. But it seems to us that if Multiplan can
store it, it ought to be able to print it out, too.
...Neil Groundwater