[mod.computers.laser-printers] dvi2ps jamming laserwriter

wood@SU-CASCADE.ARPA.UUCP (06/18/86)

With 4.2bsd and the Adobe V1 Transcript package.

For sometime we've noticed that certain .dvi files converted by dvi2ps and
sent to a LaserWriter will printout all but the last page before jamming.
the printer.  Power cycling the printer is then the only thing that will
free it.  After this happens if you look in the printer log file the last
entry is about a half page of random garbled characters.

The problem appears to be due to the number of size of the loaded fonts.
The last page (pages in reversed order) always contains a title page or
chapter heading which uses a number of especially large characters.  If
the rest of the file has also used a number of different fonts it looks like
loading these last few finally overwrites somethings in the LaserWriter
and everything dies.  If you output this final page seperately both sections
will print successfully.

Has anyone else seen this and is there a cure?  To me a cure would be anything
which prevents the printer from completely dying.

		-ernie

Ernest Wood			Center for Integrated Systems
wood@su-glacier.ARPA		Stanford University
decwrl!glacier!wood		Stanford, CA  94305	
				(415) 725-3708