[comp.sys.atari.st] Graphics on Laser printer

iadt2jf@pyr.gatech.EDU (John A. Freeman) (08/30/88)

In article <1988@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>I found this article quite funny.  The software I have always used
>has always printed nicely formatted text at around 6 pages per minute.

I found THIS article (and the other ones like it) quite funny. Let me
reiterate an important point that has already been made at least once.
We're talking about printing GRAPHICS on the laser printer. Graphic images
DO take a long time. Noone said that text prints at ten minutes a page.
Please pay attention.

drs@bnlux0.bnl.gov (David R. Stampf) (08/31/88)

In article <6348@pyr.gatech.EDU> iadt2jf@pyr.UUCP (John A. Freeman) writes:
>In article <1988@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>>I found this article quite funny.  The software I have always used
>>has always printed nicely formatted text at around 6 pages per minute.
>
>I found THIS article (and the other ones like it) quite funny. Let me
>reiterate an important point that has already been made at least once.
>We're talking about printing GRAPHICS on the laser printer. Graphic images
>DO take a long time. Noone said that text prints at ten minutes a page.
>Please pay attention.

Well, while everyone is laughing - there are two kinds of graphics - pictures,
and letters that are "drawn" on the page.  When the atari laser printer
finally hit the stores last January, I had a few $K burning a hole in my
pocket, and gave it a lot of consideration until I went to a store and
saw it take about 10 minutes to print out a page using one of the page
makers (Personal Publisher I believe) which was mostly text.  Since the
computer was essentially dead for that time, I walked away and bought something
that would keep me occupied rather than bored - a Mac.  

Rasterizing a page is a *big* job from the processors point of view.  Bad
programming makes it worse, but don't expect to see 8 pages a minute if
you are doing anything extraordinary.  If the laser printer that you have
has a text only mode, or an epson emulation mode, then you can probably
pump pages out.  But, if that is all you are doing, there are many more
cheaper ways to get the output.

	< dave