chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (04/27/88)
Consider this a combination warning to the masses and public RFE for Apple
to fix Printmonitor....
Folks printing in the background should be aware that Printmonitor might
run out of memory in the standard 80K partition. This works under most
circumstances, but not, as I found out last night, in all.
I was working with 4D last night, printing off a large (500+ page) cross
reference. The cref takes over 30 minutes to generate (this is a large
database, in case you were wondering....).
I start to print. 20 pages in, Printmonitor has a problem. it runs out of
memory, and it died, so it wanted to know if I wanted to restart the job.
Well, since it ran out of memory, I killed the job, went in and increased
the size of PrintMonitor's memory from 82 to 90K. Reran the cref. The print
starts. At page 90, printmonitor runs out of memory and dies again.
Now, I have this dilemma. I've got the first 90 pages of a 500 page print
job printed. I'd REALLY like to avoid spending another 35 minutes
reprocessing the silly print job, and I'd really like to avoid printing 90
wasted pages on my laserwriter. I've got better things to do with my time
and money....
So here's my first RFE for PrintMonitor: Allow me to define what page to
restart the print job at. I can always go back and reprint the job and
specify a starting point, but why should I have to waste forty minutes of my
computers time regenerating something that already exists? I've already got
the print job. Why can't PrintMonitor simply count pages until it hits the
place it needs to start? It already knows how many pages are in the print
job, so it's obviously able to count pages -- this new functionality seems
trivial to add.
Whenever you're printing out page 20 (of 23) of your mailing label job and
the printer jams, you'd pay just about anything for this functionality. II
can't think of the number of times this has bitten me. Last night wasn't the
first time, just the last straw, so to speak.
On to problem number two. This is rather insidious. I've got a 600K print
job that's unprintable in printmonitor because the memory segment is too
small. Printmonitor wants to know if I want to print it again. Well, no, not
until I grow the memory. So I "suspend" printing indefinitely. Printmonitor
obliges, and sits there waiting for me to start the printer again.
PrintMonitor has no "Quit" button, or "Quit" menu item. There is absolutely
no way I can make PrintMonitor die. Unless PrintMonitor dies, I can't change
the memory allocation through the Get Info dialog.
This is called a race condition. I can't print the job without changing the
memory, I can't change the memory until I either print the job or toss is
out of the queue. I don't want to toss it out of the queue because I don't
want to spend all that time regenerating it (although I'm close to doing it
anyway out of sheer frustration!). I got around this one the hard way. I
rebooted, and caught printmonitor before it restarted and changed the memory
size to 120K. In printing the 500 page document, by the by, it used about
110K out of the 120K. People who print very large jobs might wnat to take
note of that and increate printmonitor's default size.
I consider this a bug. PrintMonitor is a program that you Can Not Kill. It
violates the interface specs by not having a "quit" menu option, and while
you don't really need it often, when you do, and it's not there, it's a
killer.
Hey, Apple! please, pretty please, fix Printmonitor?
Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ
Welcome to the Latrine Wall!
What do you want to do, number 1 or number 2?tecot@Apple.COM (Ed Tecot) (04/28/88)
In article <50956@sun.uucp> chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >Consider this a combination warning to the masses and public RFE for Apple >to fix Printmonitor.... First, thanks for the feedback. I'm going to respond to your problems one by one. >So here's my first RFE for PrintMonitor: Allow me to define what page to >restart the print job at. I can always go back and reprint the job and >specify a starting point, but why should I have to waste forty minutes of my >computers time regenerating something that already exists? I've already got >the print job. Why can't PrintMonitor simply count pages until it hits the >place it needs to start? It already knows how many pages are in the print >job, so it's obviously able to count pages -- this new functionality seems >trivial to add. Good suggestion, but easier said than done. PrintMonitor has no idea how many pages are in the job, its the Laserwriter driver telling you that information. I still think its a good idea, but not an overnight change. >On to problem number two. This is rather insidious. I've got a 600K print >job that's unprintable in printmonitor because the memory segment is too >small. Printmonitor wants to know if I want to print it again. Well, no, not >until I grow the memory. So I "suspend" printing indefinitely. Printmonitor >obliges, and sits there waiting for me to start the printer again. > >PrintMonitor has no "Quit" button, or "Quit" menu item. There is absolutely >no way I can make PrintMonitor die. Unless PrintMonitor dies, I can't change >the memory allocation through the Get Info dialog. PrintMonitor will quit when it has nothing in its queue is ready to print. If your job is suspended indefinitely, simply click on a finder window and it will go away. I'm not defending the lack of a quit item, just pointing out a workaround. _emt extra lines so inews won't reject my article (stupid!)
darin@Apple.COM (Darin Adler) (05/11/88)
In article <50956@sun.uucp> chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: > I consider this a bug. PrintMonitor is a program that you Can Not Kill. It > violates the interface specs by not having a "quit" menu option, and while > you don't really need it often, when you do, and it's not there, it's a > killer. I think I agree that a "Quit" for PrintMonitor would be good, but note this: The "Background" demon launches PrintMonitor whenever there are spool files to print, so immediately after you quit PrintMonitor, a new one is spawned! Putting in a "Quit" that makes sense would require some kind of change. -- Darin Adler AppleLink:Adler4 UUCP: {sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual}!apple!darin CSNET: darin@Apple.com