Christopher Tate <CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> (04/17/91)
Neither the StyleWriter nor the Personal LaserWriter LS seem to support the SetLineWidth PicComment. Personally I find this rather frustrating, since it means that even if I, as a programmer, go to the trouble to support high- resolution PICT's, only a very few of the available printers will benefit from my efforts. The StyleWriter is Apple's highest resolution printer! And still, the driver doesn't support fine-line drawing. As I understand it, the LaserWriter SC *does* support SetLineWidth; is this correct? If so, why couldn't the relevant code have been incorporated into the new LS and StyleWriter drivers also? (Just a few more friendly neighborhood mutterings from this corner....) ------- Christopher Tate | somewhere i have never travelled, cxt105@psuvm.psu.edu | gladly beyond any experience, ..!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!cxt105 | your eyes have their silence.
leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue) (04/17/91)
In article <91107.104212CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu (Christopher Tate) writes: >Neither the StyleWriter nor the Personal LaserWriter LS seem to support the >SetLineWidth PicComment. Personally I find this rather frustrating, since it >means that even if I, as a programmer, go to the trouble to support high- >resolution PICT's, only a very few of the available printers will benefit >from my efforts. > >The StyleWriter is Apple's highest resolution printer! And still, the driver >doesn't support fine-line drawing. As I understand it, the LaserWriter SC >*does* support SetLineWidth; is this correct? If so, why couldn't the >relevant code have been incorporated into the new LS and StyleWriter drivers >also? I'm not disputing your claim, Chris. However, just for your info, when using the StyleWriter with standard Mac applications which DO support fine lines, such as MacDraw II, you do, in fact, get thin lines. In fact, hairlines look much better on the SW than on a Laser Printer, keeping their width regardless of position, something that the Postscript drivers don't always do. I don't know whether MacDraw gets these fine lines using some other mechanism than SetLineWidth, but anyway, the effect is as if it did. -Bill Leue leue@crd.ge.com
marshall@sdd.hp.com (Marshall Clow) (04/17/91)
In article <91107.104212CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> Christopher Tate <CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> writes: >Neither the StyleWriter nor the Personal LaserWriter LS seem to support the >SetLineWidth PicComment. Personally I find this rather frustrating, since it >means that even if I, as a programmer, go to the trouble to support high- >resolution PICT's, only a very few of the available printers will benefit >from my efforts. > >[more mutterings deleted] I haven't played with either the StyleWriter or the PLW LS much, but a cursory examination of the drivers indicates that they both support the PrGeneral calls GetReslData and SetResl. See IM V-410. This allows you to print all objects, not just lines and frames, at the printer's resoulution. Of course, you have do do the scaling yourself, but that's not too much of a pain. Marshall Clow Hewlett Packard Color Imaging Division Internet: marshall@sdd.hp.com AppleLink: HP.Marshall Phone: (619) 592-4151
CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu (Christopher Tate) (04/18/91)
marshall@sdd.hp.com (Marshall Clow) says: >I haven't played with either the StyleWriter or the PLW LS much, but a cursory >examination of the drivers indicates that they both support the PrGeneral >calls GetReslData and SetResl. See IM V-410. This allows you to print all >objects, not just lines and frames, at the printer's resoulution. Of course, >you have do do the scaling yourself, but that's not too much of a pain. and leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue) says: >I'm not disputing your claim, Chris. However, just for your info, when >using the StyleWriter with standard Mac applications which DO support fine >lines, such as MacDraw II, you do, in fact, get thin lines. In fact, >hairlines look much better on the SW than on a Laser Printer, keeping >their width regardless of position, something that the Postscript drivers >don't always do. > >I don't know whether MacDraw gets these fine lines using some other >mechanism than SetLineWidth, but anyway, the effect is as if it did. I suspect that MacDraw does indeed use the PrGeneral() facilities for application-defined addressable resolution. I *do* know that the StyleWriter uses them, from first-hand experience. And I'll agree that the output is quite impressive, though a trifle prone to horizontal streaking at the top and bottom edges of the print head. Even the fine vertical lines come out straight! However, let me clarify: the practical upshot of the StyleWriter and the PLW LS drivers not supporting the "SetLineWidth" PicComment is that when printing a PICT which contains embedded line width information via the SetLineWidth mechanism, that information will be ignored. For example, in the documentation to my graphics toy-application "Lissart," I have a couple of PICT's extracted from the EPSF files that Lissart generates. Those PICT's have fine lines specified via SetLineWidth. On a PostScript LaserWriter, the PICT's are rendered with fine lines, allowing the reader to see the detail of the images -- which is the point of having the illustrations in the first place; they represent the progressive evolution of an image that variation in the parameters causes. However, the PLW LS and the StyleWriter don't support this, so even though they offer top-of-the-line resolution, I feel that their functionality in dealing with *portable* image representations is sorely lacking. They're not PostScript, so EPSF is useless; they don't support SetLineWidth, so PICT's won't have any fine-line adjustment utilized -- all that's left is to print images directly from the generating application, which can take advantage of the Print Manager routines for optimizing resolution. But this isn't always what you want.... Oh, well. I apologize for taking up so much bandwidth on this; it's just irritating to see (IMHO) regression in the technology offered to the market. ------- Christopher Tate | "The soldier came knocking upon the Queen's door; | He said 'I am not fighting for you anymore....'" cxt105@psuvm.psu.edu | cxt105@psuvm.bitnet | -- Suzanne Vega
omh@cs.brown.edu (Owen M. Hartnett) (04/19/91)
Can we assume therefore from this discussion that applications which now use the picComment should now use the PrGeneral stuff? Or should we use picComment on PostScript devices and PrGeneral for non PS? Enquiring mimes want to know. -Owen Owen Hartnett omh@cs.brown.edu.CSNET Brown University Computer Science omh@cs.brown.edu uunet!brunix!omh "Don't wait up for me tonight because I won't be home for a month."
gurgle@well.sf.ca.us (Pete Gontier) (04/21/91)
In article <91107.190347CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu (Christopher Tate) writes: >However, let me clarify: the practical upshot of the StyleWriter and >the PLW LS drivers not supporting the "SetLineWidth" PicComment is that >when printing a PICT which contains embedded line width information via >the SetLineWidth mechanism, that information will be ignored. I complained to DTS about this when the printers were in beta. Unfortunately, our seed was too late for the print shop to do anything about it. At this point, the feature can't even be added, because the powers that be are concerned that developers will start using special case code to determine whether they have a late enough version of the driver to use SetLineWidth. (If the version is too early, the theory goes, developers might want to dot the line instead of making it thin.) Such version-checking, of course, would be done differently by every developer, because there is no standard facility for getting the version of a printer driver. (This is probably a bad idea anyway; getting version info means you know what printer and driver you're printing to, which is another black art in the first place.) -- Pete Gontier, gurgle@well.sf.ca.us Software Imagineer, Kiwi Software, Inc.