schear@ttidca.TTI.COM (Steve Schear) (06/27/90)
THIS POSTING IS A EDITED VERSION OF YESTERDAY'S POSTING I am currently working on a project which requires that I can print a complex form (perhaps scanned from an original printed copy) in short order (<30 sec). No PS engine I can find is capable of handling this task. Our current DP LZ1260 certainly cannot. Therefore, I have begun persuing other alternatives. The nost attractive one at the moment involves sending the form to the printer and imaging it in the engine to just prior to the print step. At this point the bit map image would be written to the disk and saved until a job requiring this form was required. Then the form would be loaded into printer memory, from the locally attached disk, and have the form's variable (i.e., field information) overlayed, and the result printed. I understand that PS2 is supposed to have such a feature, but even if it would work for my application, I cannot wait. Is there any reasonably straightforward way to accomplish the same effect on a current PS printer (e.g., DP or LW IINTX) using its private disk option? Steve Schear Product Planner Citicorp/TTI 3100 Ocean Park Blvd., MS-44 Santa Monica, CA 90405 (213) 450-9111, x2880
phillips@tegra.COM (Steve Phillips) (06/28/90)
In article <18099@ttidca.TTI.COM> schear@ttidca.TTI.COM (Steve Schear) writes: >I am working on a project which requires the rapid display of filled in >forms. We are currently using a DataProducts LZ1260i (which I believe >does not have a provision for a disk support), but could switch to a >LW NTX if required. > >My question is this. Could PS code be sent to a PS printer, which >supports an attached disk, which could store an imaged document >(just prior to printing) in such a way as to be easily recalled >from disk (in a later job) and have information "filled-in" over >the form and printed? Imaging time of the forms we would like >to use is much to slow, and a faster printer does not appear to >be an acceptable solution either. > >I've heard that PS2 will include such a feature, but my problem >is immediate. Any suggestions? I'll take advantage of the opportunity to put in a plug for the product I work on, the Varityper 5000. Our PostScript interpreter provides PostScript commands to save page bitmaps to disk and to call these pre-imaged pages out from other jobs Our customers use it for applications like forms generation or for adding logos or other commonly used symbols to their documents. Now that I've gotten my plug out of the way... :^) On a low-resolution printer which uses a frame buffer (e.g. most 300-DPI printers) you might be able to use the copypage operator to accomplish what you're trying to do. Draw your basic form, add the text, and do copypage to show the first page. For each successive page, erase the text you've previously drawn by overwriting it in white, draw the new text, and do another copypage. This should run fairly quickly, since the form will have been imaged only for the first page. For the pages after it, only the erasing and the new text need to be drawn. Unfortunately, this trick only works for low-resolution printers. Higher-resolution devices can't afford the memory for a full page bitmap, so they store all of the page elements in a display list. The entire display list is reimaged for every page, so you wouldn't get any benefit out of the copypage operator. In fact, each page would actually slow down, since all of the layers of text and erase boxes would have to be reimaged for every page. So play around with copypage - it might solve your problem. - Steve -- ============================================================================ Steve Phillips Tegra-Varityper, Inc. tegra!phillips@uunet.com Billerica, MA ============================================================================