macdonald@dickns.dec.com (Paul MacDonald -- CUP/ML -- DTN 223-3439) (02/20/88)
I found a file on one of the BBS's the other day containing what is claimed to be a V1.3 PRINTER.DEVICE file and several printer drivers. The READ.ME file claimed a 3x to 5x increase in graphic print speed. I tried it and sure enough it was much faster. Only problem was that the supplied EpsonX printer driver still has minute horizontal white lines between carriage returns during graphics printing. This was true of other Epson drivers in V1.1 and V1.2. A patch program cured the problem. I haven't tried the old patch program on the new driver, but it is specific to the old drivers only. The file containing these gems was either on the LCA BBS at 617-769-8444 (after normal store hours, say after 9 pm) or the MSS BBS at 305-790-0774 (24 hrs a day). Not sure which. Both have 2400 baud and are legitimate public domain-only BBS's. If someone from Commodore is out there, perhaps they can shed some light on the appearance of this file, and on the EpsonX driver problem. Paul [representing myself, not DEC]
spencer@eris (Randal m. Spencer [RmS]) (02/22/88)
Recently on *comp.sys.amiga* macdonald@dickns.dec.com (Paul MacDonald -- CUP/ML -- DTN 223-3439) wrote: ...I found a file on one of the BBS's the other day containing what is claimed ...to be a V1.3 PRINTER.DEVICE file and several printer drivers. ... ...The file containing these gems was either on the XXX BBS at 617-555-1212. ...(after normal store hours, say after 9 pm) or the YYY BBS at 305-555-1212 ...(24 hrs a day). Not sure which. Both have 2400 baud and are legitimate ...public domain-only BBS's. ... COME ON GUYS! This is not PUBLIC DOMAIN. What you are talking about is out and out *PIRACY*. Let's get this straight. Someone tried to upload the same file to my BBS and I deleted the file and the user and posted a big warning to my other users. Face it, 1.3 isn't out yet! And guess what? There is a *reason* for it, and the reason is... Cause it's not done yet! So hold on and wait until it gets released. The last thing this world (and Commodore) needs is for there to be 50 million versions of these printer drivers running around causing end-users frustration and making them call tech support. Especially difficult is people using those 1.3 printer drivers and thinking them the release versions. Then they call Commodore and say "I have this bug...", and the West Chester people pull all this hair out trying to figure what's wrong, and it turns out the bug was fixed monthes ago. So please, don't be part of the problem, be part of the solution... ...If someone from Commodore is out there, perhaps they can shed some light on ...the appearance of this file, and on the EpsonX driver problem. ... Oh, come on, see the proceeding paragraphs! ...Paul -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Randy Spencer P.O. Box 4542 Berkeley CA 94704 (415)222-7595 spencer@mica.berkeley.edu I N F I N I T Y BBS: (415)222-9416 ..ucbvax!mica!spencer s o f t w a r e AAA-WH1M -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
dfisk@hawk.ulowell.edu (David Fisk) (03/07/88)
The following message is being posted for an area BBS SysOp who doesn't have
access to USENet. Any replies or comments will be forwarded to him.
-----------------
I found out a couple of weeks ago that a guy named Paul MacDonald left a
message here on Usenet saying that a copy of the 1.3 printer device plus a
bunch of drivers were on the BBS that I run, called by him the "LCA" BBS
(which is NOT the name of the BBS, the name is the IDCMP BBS. LCA is the name
of the store where the BBS is run from, but that's not the name of the BBS!).
Wel, I'd like to tell all of you here that this is NOT TRUE! IDCMP NEVER HAS,
and NEVER WILL HAVE files available for downloading which aren't freely
distributable!! I am the only person who has access to approve uploaded files
on IDCMP, and I do my best to make sure that only freely distributable files
are approved. When I heard of this message I checked every one of the over
700+ Amiga files online just to make sure, and there were no questionable
files online. And a few days ago Paul left a message of IDCMP, saying that it
was the other board in Florida that had the files in question illegally
online, and he told me that the SYSOP of that board had quickly removed the
files. I hope this reassures all of you out there that the IDCMP BBS is a
clean board, and has always been free of non-PD files for all of the 14
months it has been up.
Graham Kinsey
SYSOP, IDCMP BBS (617-769-8444, 8PM-8AM)
--------------------
David Fisk
dfisk@hawk.ulowell.edudaveb@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Berezowski) (03/08/88)
In article <5284@swan.ulowell.edu> dfisk@hawk.ulowell.edu (David Fisk) writes: > >The following message is being posted for an area BBS SysOp who doesn't have >access to USENet. Any replies or comments will be forwarded to him. >----------------- > I found out a couple of weeks ago that a guy named Paul MacDonald left a > message here on Usenet saying that a copy of the 1.3 printer device plus a > bunch of drivers were on the BBS that I run, called by him the "LCA" BBS > (which is NOT the name of the BBS, the name is the IDCMP BBS. LCA is the name > of the store where the BBS is run from, but that's not the name of the BBS!). > Wel, I'd like to tell all of you here that this is NOT TRUE! IDCMP NEVER HAS, > and NEVER WILL HAVE files available for downloading which aren't freely > distributable!! I am the only person who has access to approve uploaded files > on IDCMP, and I do my best to make sure that only freely distributable files > are approved. When I heard of this message I checked every one of the over > 700+ Amiga files online just to make sure, and there were no questionable > files online. And a few days ago Paul left a message of IDCMP, saying that it > was the other board in Florida that had the files in question illegally > online, and he told me that the SYSOP of that board had quickly removed the > files. I hope this reassures all of you out there that the IDCMP BBS is a > clean board, and has always been free of non-PD files for all of the 14 > months it has been up. > > Graham Kinsey > SYSOP, IDCMP BBS (617-769-8444, 8PM-8AM) >-------------------- >David Fisk >dfisk@hawk.ulowell.edu I applaud your efforts and honesty. In this case it would be stupid for anybody to post beta versions of any V1.3 system software. It's probably got bugs guys and its probably going to change so your only going to do more damage than good if you let it out. Regards, David Berezowski
daveb@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Berezowski) (03/29/88)
No V1.3 drivers have been posted to comp.amiga.binaries!!!!! The drivers posted there are V1.2 versions of the V1.3 drivers. This means that they are slower than their V1.3 counterparts BUT they work with the V1.2 driver. I posted them as a service to the Amiga community as these are drivers that are unavailable under V1.2. The drivers posted were: HP_PaintJet, EpsonQ, Xerox_4020, and Okidata_293I. Purchasers of Shakespeare or ProWrite2.0 have the V1.3 device and drivers as these products are shipping with a gamma version. The V1.3 upgrade pak (or whatever we decide to call it) will hopefully be available in the near future (May ???). This posting is in responce to the INCORRECT posting that the drivers in comp.amiga.binaries are V1.3 drivers. Thank-you for your support! Regards, David Berezowski
sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) (03/31/88)
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.47.1 of Sun Aug 2 1987 on linus (berkeley-unix) In article <3544@cbmvax.UUCP> daveb@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Berezowski) writes: > Purchasers of Shakespeare or ProWrite2.0 have the V1.3 device and > drivers as these products are shipping with a gamma version. > > The V1.3 upgrade pak (or whatever we decide to call it) will > hopefully be available in the near future (May ???). For those of us who have the gamma versions from ProWrite2.0 or Shakespeare, would it be possible for someone to post docs on the new capabilities of the 1.3 drivers? ProWrite 2.0 came with a new version of Preferences that shows a whole bunch of new options for printing, but unfortunately the ProWrite manual didn't document all of them. Steven Litvintchouk MITRE Corporation Burlington Road Bedford, MA 01730 Fone: (617)271-7753 ARPA: sdl@mitre-bedford.arpa UUCP: ...{cbosgd,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,mit-eddie,philabs,utzoo}!linus!sdl "Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the world." -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.
papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) (03/31/88)
In article <28116@linus.UUCP| sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) writes: |In article <3544@cbmvax.UUCP| daveb@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Berezowski) writes: || Purchasers of Shakespeare or ProWrite2.0 have the V1.3 device and || drivers as these products are shipping with a gamma version. || The V1.3 upgrade pak (or whatever we decide to call it) will || hopefully be available in the near future (May ???). | |For those of us who have the gamma versions from ProWrite2.0 or |Shakespeare, would it be possible for someone to post docs on the new |capabilities of the 1.3 drivers? ProWrite 2.0 came with a new version |of Preferences that shows a whole bunch of new options for printing, |but unfortunately the ProWrite manual didn't document all of them. Until the 1.3 Upgrade Pak becomes available, the best docs are included in the latest AmigaMail (Jan/Feb 88). -- Marco Papa -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= uucp:...!pollux!papa BIX:papa ARPAnet:pollux!papa@oberon.usc.edu "There's Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Diga!" -- Leo Schwab [quoting Rick Unland] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (04/01/88)
In article <28116@linus.UUCP> sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) writes: >For those of us who have the gamma versions from ProWrite2.0 or >Shakespeare, would it be possible for someone to post docs on the new >capabilities of the 1.3 drivers? Well, I have Shakespeare (which is a great program for page layout) and have been playing with the 1.3 drivers for both Shakespeare and Deluxe Paint II. The good news is that from now on there is zero problem in getting any deluxe paint picture to print the way you expect it to on the printer. Using Deluxe Paint in 960 X 600 mono gives me crisp 1:1 printouts on the Epson FX-286e (half page) (full page would be 960 X 1200 which the printer.device can handle but Dpaint can't). I usually do my own dithering as well. Since the Epson is printing at 240 DPI the actual pixels being printed are 2 X 2 pixels. And if you choose 'Anti-Aliasing' it can improve on the diagonals a bit too. Shakespeare gives me the best combined text and image outputs on my printer. Some of this is attributable to the new printer device and thus *any* page layout program will benefit. I think that if you were one of those people complaining that your friends 'Mac' printouts on the ImageWriter looked better than anything you could do on the Amiga you will be pleasantly suprised at the turn about. You see the ImageWrite is stuck at 80 DPI or some such number, whereas the Amiga will print at what ever resolution you can send to the printer. In many cases this will be higher than 80 DPI. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
daveb@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Berezowski) (04/03/88)
In article <28116@linus.UUCP> sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) writes: > >For those of us who have the gamma versions from ProWrite2.0 or >Shakespeare, would it be possible for someone to post docs on the new >capabilities of the 1.3 drivers? ProWrite 2.0 came with a new version >of Preferences that shows a whole bunch of new options for printing, >but unfortunately the ProWrite manual didn't document all of them. > V1.3 Preferences (Preliminary) ---------------- The new Preferences program has a 2nd printer graphic screen. The gadgets and their descriptions are as follows: Gadget Description ------ ----------- Density 1-7 - the user density is SPECIAL_DENSITY1 thru SPECIAL_DENSITY7 and it OVERRIDES whatever density the application program has selected. You can use this to assure a certain density. The lower the density the faster the print times (on those printers with multiple densities). Center Image turns on/off horizontal centering of the picture on the paper. This options overrides the Left Offset value. Scaling Fraction - normal scaling (default). Integer - every dot on the screen is guarenteed to appear as an even number of dots on the printer both in the x and y dimension. ie. if your source picture is 320x200, the printed picture width will be either 320, 640, 960, etc. dots wide and 200, 400, 600, etc. dots high. THIS IS THE OPTION TO USE WHEN YOU ARE TRYING TO PRINT A PICTURE THAT CONTAINS THIN VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL LINES (LIKE A GRID). The actual size of the printed picture will be the size you asked for scaled up/down to the nearest multipe of the width and height of the picture. When you do this you completely override the aspecting feature of the printer device. ie. it is possible to get a (slightly) distorted (non aspect ratio correct) picture. THIS OPTION IS ALSO USEFULL IF YOU ARE PRINTING OUT BIT-IMAGE TEXT (LIKE IN NOTEPAD) AS THE FONTS WONT BE DISTORTED DUE TO FRACTIONAL SCALING. Color Correction - this option selectively tries to match all shades of either red (R), green (G), or blue (B) from the screen to the printer. Initially the printer device can print all the 4096 colors of the Amiga on a printer. However, as color correction is applied the total number of printed colors is reduced to a low of 3172. To see the effect of this option, print out a picture with solid red, green, and blue shades twice, once with this option on, and once with it off. Now compare the two pictures with the screen display; the results should be obvious. LeftOffset - offsets the printed picture horizontally in increments of tenths of an inch. The 'Center Image' option (above) disables this option. Dithering Ordered - color intensities on the printer are formed using an 'ordered' dither method. This is the default. HalfTone - color intensities on the printer are formed using a 'halftone' dither method. This technique is similar to the one used in newspapers and comic books and works best on high density printers (> 150 dots/inch). F/S - color intensities on the printer are formed using the 'Floyd-Steinberg' error distribution method. This option (currently) slows down the printing by a factor of two as it has to analyse each pixel before printing. Note that this option automatically turns off smoothing as they can not be used in conjunction with each other. MaxWidth - limits the width of the printed picture in tenths / inch. MaxHeight - limits the height of the printed picture in tenths / inch. <-Limits-> - this gadget determines how the above 'limits' are to be interpreted as follow: IGNORE - the limits are to be IGNORED. The printed picture's size is bounded by the old standbye of: width = (right margin - left margin + 1) / chars per inch. height = lines per page / lines per inch. This option is here to remain compatible with pre V1.3 software and is the default. BOUNDED - the printed picture's size is BOUNDED by MaxWidth and MaxHeight. ie. if you want the printed picture to be no bigger than 4 x 5 (but it could be smaller), set MaxWidth to 40, MaxHeight to 50, and select BOUNDED. This option is here so that you don't have to change the text settings (margins, lines per page, etc.) everytime you do a graphic print. ABSOLUTE - MaxWidth and MaxHeight are taken to be ABSOLUTE values. The printed picture's size is no longer bounded rather it will absolutely be the size specified here. ie. If you want the printed picture to be exactly 4.0 x 5.0 inches; set MaxWidth to 40, MaxWidth to 50, and select ABSOLUTE. When you do this you completely override the aspecting feature of the printer device. ie. it is possible to get a (very) distorted (non aspect ratio correct) picture. Setting one (but not both) of the dimensions to zero aspect ratio corrects that dimension. ie. If you set MaxWidth to 40 and MaxHeight to 0, then the printed picture will be 4.0 inches wide and as tall as it needs to be in order to be aspect ratio correct. If both of the dimensions are zero then the printed picture will be the printer's maximum dots wide and as tall as it needs to be in order to be aspect ratio correct. PIXELS - MaxWidth and MaxHeight are taken to be absolute values in printer PIXELS and not tenths of an inch! The same rules for 'ABSOLUTE' (MaxWidth = 0 and MaxHeight = 0) apply here. MULTIPLY - MaxWidth and MaxHeight are used to MULTIPLY the source picture's width and height. ie. If you specified a MaxWidth of 2 and a MaxHeight of 4, the printed picture would be 2x the source picture's width pixels wide and 4x the source picture's height pixels high. Thus if the source picture were 320 x 200, the printed picture would be 640 (320 x 2) pixels wide and 800 (200 x 4) pixels high. The same rules for 'ABSOLUTE' (MaxWidth = 0 and MaxHeight = 0) apply here. Ths same benefits that apply to INTEGER scaling are valid here. Smoothing - attempts to smooth diagonal lines. This option (currently) slows down the printing by a factor of two as it has to analyze each pixel (and its closest neighbours) before printing. This option is best suited for use with programs that do graphic dumps of text (like ProWrite, PageSetter, CityDesk, Publisher 1000, NotePad, etc.). Note that this option automatically turns off Floyd-Steinberg dithering (and selects Ordered dithering) as they can not be used in conjunction with each other. Regards, David Berezowski
sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) (04/05/88)
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.47.1 of Sun Aug 2 1987 on linus (berkeley-unix) In article <3566@cbmvax.UUCP> daveb@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Berezowski) writes: > > V1.3 Preferences (Preliminary) > ---------------- > [ rest of article deleted] > > Regards, David Berezowski Thanx, David, that was very helpful! By the way, the latest issue of "Amiga Sentry" has an article on some of the new features of Workbench 1.3 (including the new printer drivers). Steven Litvintchouk MITRE Corporation Burlington Road Bedford, MA 01730 Fone: (617)271-7753 ARPA: sdl@mitre-bedford.arpa UUCP: ...{cbosgd,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,mit-eddie,philabs,utzoo}!linus!sdl "Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the world." -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.
daveb@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Berezowski) (04/07/88)
In article <28403@linus.UUCP> sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) writes: > >By the way, the latest issue of "Amiga Sentry" has an article on >some of the new features of Workbench 1.3 (including the new printer >drivers). > Yes, but bear in mind that they were looking at a pre-release version. (more minor goodies in store, hint, hint).