[comp.sys.mac] Printing Thin Lines on the Laserwriter

wade@sdacs.UUCP (02/28/87)

Problem: How to convince the LaserWriter to draw finer width
lines between points.

I am able to print the LW from within a LightspeedC application program,
and Quickdraw does its thing just fine, except a pensize of (1,1) (which
I understand to be the smallest Quickdraw understands) gives a line on
the LW which is much thicker than 1 (300 dpi) pixel. Interestingly 
I can capture the Postscript output of the program, go in and change
the line "1 1 pn" to ".1 .1 pn" and the output will have thinner lines.
How can I control this parameter from within the program.?

Wade Blomgren
UCSD Academic Computing Services
 ...sdcsvax!sdacs!wade

housen@ssc-vax.UUCP (Kevin Housen) (03/07/87)

You can convince the Laserwriter to use thin lines (or thick ones)
by using picture comments.

Insert a SetLineWidth pic comment (kind=182) into your picture.
The additional data for the comment is a point.  The vertical component
of the point is the numerator and the horizontal component is the
denominator of the scaling factor that the horz and vert components
of the pen size are multiplied by to obtain the new pen width.
For example to reduce the line width by a factor of 2, use
a point with (horiz=2, vert=1).

I have tried this and it seems to work ok.

                                Kevin Housen
                                Boeing Aerospace Co
                                MS 3H-29
                                Seattle, WA 98124
                                (206) 657-3484