wnn@DSUNX1.DSRD.ORNL.GOV (W. N. Naegeli) (02/09/89)
Thanks to everyone who made suggestions in response to my request for help.
Most pointed out things that I was already aware of, such as the wait-time
setting, i.e. the number of seconds NetPrint waits for inactivity before
starting to print. However, the problem is that WordPerfect gives the print
job to NetPrint much more slowly than to a printer attached directly to the
PC. I.e. it takes longer for NetPrint to receive the data stream and store
it in a temporary disk file than it take for a printer to receive and print
it. So I am not even looking at the part of the task when netprint is waiting
to make sure that it has received everything and then actually sending it
over the network to the printer.
WordPerfect Technical Support did some testing of their own and confirmed
that the printing performance with NetPrint was dismal. They used a PC XT
and an Apple LaserWriter II NT. They claim that when printing through the
serial port it took 1.5 minutes to print the PRINTER.TST test document that
comes with WP 5.0. Using NetPrint it took 6.5 min. They also tried with a
286 machine, and it took 5 min. My own figures for this test, using a PC XT
with a 28 ms hard disk and a NEC SilentWriter LC-890 (I can't recommend this
printer at all) were: 6:08 min. when using NetPrint and the LocalTalk PC card
and 2:32 min. when attaching the printer to LPT1 (This printer has a parallel
as well as a serial interface. I haven't tried a direct serial connection
because I don't have the right cable handy and no time to search for one).
Here comes the interesting part. When I went into WordPerfect's Port-
Selection menu and selected option 8 -- "Other" then entering "LPT1" without
a colon instead of selecting option 1, the test document printed in 4:01 min.
That is a 50 percent imporvement and for other documents it seemed to cut
printing time almost in half. It is still relatively slow, but we find it
acceptable. In general I would say using NetPrint takes about 50 percent
longer than printing directly, but that is not too bad if you consider the
advantage of being able to share the printer with many other users. If you
print multiple documents in quick succession, NetPrint may do almost as well
as direct printing because it can spool jobs in while spooling another job
out.
The big question is, what's actually going on. "LPT1" is a reserved word
in DOS. The colon after it is not required. Probably, if I put it in that way,
WordPerfect handles it just as it would handle any file name (Option 8:
"Other" really is intended primarily to allow you to print into a disk file).
I assume that DOS recognizes this name at the reserved word for a port, which
in turn is redirected by NetPrint. Is it possible that when you select
Option 1: "LPT1:" WordPerfect bypasses DOS trying to go directly to the BIOS,
and that such may be more round-about for NetPrint to capture??? Obviously
there is something going on between WordPerfect and NetPrint and if that
causes such great differences in jperformance, there may be a way to improve
it even beyond what this stupit "Option-8" trick does.