TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.ARPA (11/19/88)
These hav been asked before, with no response. Maybe someone who knows is now listening. Does GSWorks print in graphics mode or character mode? Can it mix character mode and graphics mode? Are its graphics capabilities draw style or paint style or both? What printers does it support and if it doesn't support your favorite printer how hard is it for a user to add a driver and/or parameters for a new one? TMPLee@dockmaster.arpa
V112PDL5@UBVMSC.CC.BUFFALO.EDU (11/22/88)
Appleworks GS can print in either character or graphics mode.
To be accurate this is a function of the printer driver. The print
dialog box allows you to choose 3 different modes of printing.
Better text prints in graphics mode and double strikes
what it prints by returning the printer head and repeating
the prining over again. This is very, very slow. Better graphics
has the effect of printing text much, much faster. It's no where
near the speed of plain text printing however. Draft mode is the
mode that prints in plain text. It still takes quite a while to
calculate, but printing is at normal Appleworks speed. I've had
problems with this in the Spreadsheet. A label entered as a
single line spread over multiple cells, was printed multiple
times spaced a few characters away, printing over a previous
copy.
The Graphics module is both a paint and a draw program. There
are both paint objects and draw objects. Draw objects are clear,
but paint objects are a rectanglar bit map that is created whenever
you deselect a paint tool, reselect a paint tool, and draw. It's
quite weird. You can fill in areas with the paint can, and retain
what's underneath. You cannot edit patters, you cannot zoom in
and out like a normal draw program (other than fat bits), but
you can edit colors.
I believe the Laserwriter, Imagewriter, and Epson printer are
supported. Watch out for the Epson though, it may not work with
all cards, and all Epson printers.
It's impossible to make your printer work if it doesn't support
one of those three printers, except maybe in plain text (draft)
mode, and I'm not sure about that.
Keith (or any other Apple whiz for that matter), have you
tried dragging a AWGS data file out onto the desktop? When I do
that and exit from the Finder (saving the info on the disk) and
return it becomes a plain paper icon, with the correct filetype
but an auxtype set to $0000. My theory is that the Finder doesn't
store the auxtype, and the Finder can't recognize it with data
from the AWGS icon file (which I do have in my ICONS folder).
When placed back into a directory, it returns to its proper
AWGS icon.
- Mark Cromwell