kf@mitre-bedford.ARPA (04/26/88)
Printing documents with bit-map images (e.g. from a scanner) takes an
extremely long time if they are printed in the horizontal (landscape) page
setup orientation. This happens in MacDraw (with bitmap images pasted in),
SuperPaint, PowerPoint, and ImageStudio, and probably any application that
uses standard printing procedures. If the same documents are printed in the
vertical orientation (portrait), the printing can occur about 20 times faster
(in one case, printing was reduced from 20 minutes to 1 minute).
Something in the LaserWriter printer driver software, or the LaserWriter
Plus itself is very inefficient about rotating bitmap images. If the entire
document is rotated first in MacDraw, so that it appears sideways on the
screen, and the vertical orientation page setup is selected, the document will
print very quickly. And it only takes MacDraw seconds to rotate the image on
the screen (and in memory). However this is an inconvenient way to get speedy
printing and it can't be done in PowerPoint.
How can we get around this problem with printing? A co-worker here suspects
that the printer (driver or LW ROM?) software calls a routine to rotate each
individual pixel, and the overhead associated with calling the routine is
repeated for every pixel in the image -- tens or hundreds or thousands of
times, for even a moderate sized picture. Does anyone know exactly what is
causing this tremendous slowdown?
This is something that should be corrected by Apple.
By the way, we are using a Mac SE with LW 5.0 and LaserPrep 5.0, connected to
a LaserWriter Plus with Version 2.0 ROMs. Are there newer ROM versions? If
there are, do you get an upgrade through an Apple dealer and how much does it
cost?
Kevin Fong
kf@mitre-bedford.arpa
MITRE CORPORATION
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