[comp.sys.mac.hypercard] Printer Drivers and Hypercard

woody@tybalt.caltech.edu (William Edward Woody) (02/29/88)

In article <981@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> tgl@zog.cs.cmu.edu (Tom Lane) writes:
>I was just about to go out and buy HyperCard, when ees@antique.UUCP
>(Gene Sampieri) writes:
>> [SoftStyle's LaserStart printer driver for HP LaserJet printers]
>> works with Laserjet + and Series II HP Laserjet printers.  The only 
>> application that I have found it won't work with is HyperCard.  Seems thet
>> HyperCard uses internal references to the Laserwriter and Imagewriter
>> printers, ignoring the DA installed one.
>
>Gaaack.  If true, this'll make HC just about useless for me (I use the
>same printer and driver).  Can Atkinson really have been so stupid
>as to bypass the system's printer driver, or are we looking at a bug
>in LaserStart?  Anybody else out there know anything about this
>subject?

I'm working on a printer driver for a company (I'm really not a liberty
to discuss the company this is for, or anything about that driver; sorry),
but as far as I can tell Hypercard IS looking at some magic attribute in
the Laserwriter and Imagewriter driver, but it _is_ looking at the driver
installed by Chooser, and it is not doing any printer specific command
stuff.  It's simply looking at something in the drivers to tell if it
is out of date or not.

I'd suggest that ees@antique.UUCP (Gene Sampieri) try the printer drivers
he has with MacPaint to see if it works with MacPaint or not.  (The best
version to try this with would be MacPaint v 1.5, which seems to do
version number checking in the same way as Hypercard, but I'm not very
clear at this point.)

In the future you should be seeing a lot of third party printer drivers,
especially since the articles in MacTutor a few months ago.  I know that
with luck you should be seeing my code out there in a few months in a
commercial product.  (My very first one!!! Gosh, I'm so excited!!!)
  -  William Edward Woody
     woody@tybalt.caltech.edu                   (Mac>][n&&/|\)&&(MacII>AT)
Disclamer:  I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm talking about...