gls@novavax.UUCP (Gary Schaps) (11/21/90)
serverdict begin exitserver statusdict 0 60 0 setdefaulttimeouts If not, how is this accomplished? Thanks. -- Gary L. Schaps ...gatech!uflorida!novavax!gls
scu101@csc.anu.oz.au (11/22/90)
With regard to setting default timeouts, you should be aware of the following
letter I sent off to Apple on 13-jun-1989, to which I have not received a
reply. How about some action from Apple on this!
Dear Apple,
In the last few days I have noticed something very peculiar with attempting
to print from the manualfeed tray on a LaserWriter II NTX which I would like
to be explained. I am in the position of being able to send a text file to
the serial line of a LaserWriter Plus or a LaserWriter II NTX from a VAX. An
error handler has been sent down previously which will print out on the page
if a PostScript error has occurred, what the error was and the assembled page so
far. This error handler has worked remarkably well in the past (and has been
very useful) but doesn't show up any errors in what follows. If I send the
following PostScript to both of these LaserWriters:
statusdict begin /manualfeed true def end
/Courier findfont 10 scalefont setfont
100 100 moveto (This is a test) show
showpage
then everything works on both LaserWriters as expected. However, if I send the
following PostScript to both of these LaserWriters:
statusdict begin /manualfeedtimeout 180 def /manualfeed true def end
/Courier findfont 10 scalefont setfont
100 100 moveto (This is a test) show
showpage
then everything works as expected on the LaserWriter Plus, but on the
LaserWriter II NTX the paper feeds as expected from the manualfeed slot but
nothing is printed on the paper! I have verified that this is also what happens
on a second LaserWriter II NTX. However, if you increase the manualfeedtimeout
to the values of 200 or 3600 then things work as expected again for the
LaserWriter II NTX. The value of 3600 comes from a V5.2 Laserprep file (and it
gave me the idea as to how to overcome this peculiarity). I haven't experimented
with any other values for manualfeedtimeout (but the first piece of PostScript
would have used the default value of 60).
The reason that I suspect that this has been noticed by Apple is the
peculiar value of 3600 seconds (1 hour) in Laserprep V5.2 which wasn't there
explicitly in earlier versions of the Laserprep file. This seems an excessively
long period for the manual feed timeout value. Has the units for the manual
feed timeout changed from seconds? I would have expected this to be upwards
compatible on LaserWriters.
Bill Alford, ACSNet:bill@phys.anu.oz.au
School Computer Unit,
Research School of Physical Sciences,
Australian National University,
GPO Box 4
Canberra City ACT 2601