ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) (01/11/91)
In <3724@uakari.primate.wisc.edu>, bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) complains that, as soon as a page starts printing on a LaserWriter via PrintMonitor, his system responsiveness is almost completely gone until the page has finished printing. I have no such problem with PrintMonitor. The only effect I notice on my machine (a vintage Mac II running System 6.0.7 and MultiFinder 6.1b9) is that mouse tracking goes just a little bit funny while background printing is in progress. This is a much milder version of the symptom you get when doing floppy I/O, where interrupts get disabled for long periods of time. This to me is a sign that PrintMonitor is doing most of its work asynchronously at interrupt level, which is quite a reasonable design, not subject to the vagaries of time-slicing under MultiFinder. Anyway, the point is, PrintMonitor works fine for me. Lawrence D'Oliveiro fone: +64-71-562-889 Computer Services Dept fax: +64-71-384-066 University of Waikato electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz Hamilton, New Zealand 37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00 "Half the lies they print about me aren't true." -- Mike Moore
tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (01/13/91)
In <3724@uakari.primate.wisc.edu>, bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) >complains that, as soon as a page starts printing on a LaserWriter >via PrintMonitor, his system responsiveness is almost completely gone >until the page has finished printing. In article <1991Jan11.182405.2673@waikato.ac.nz> ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes: >I have no such problem with PrintMonitor. The only effect I notice >on my machine (a vintage Mac II running System 6.0.7 and MultiFinder 6.1b9) >is that mouse tracking goes just a little bit funny while background >printing is in progress. This is a much milder version of the symptom you >get when doing floppy I/O, where interrupts get disabled for long periods >of time. This to me is a sign that PrintMonitor is doing most of its >work asynchronously at interrupt level, which is quite a reasonable design, >not subject to the vagaries of time-slicing under MultiFinder. > >Anyway, the point is, PrintMonitor works fine for me. I have used PrintMonitor since it was released, on a wide variety of II-series Macs, and my experience has been consistently worse than you describe and closer to what Paul describes. System responsiveness plummets; there are several-second-long lockout of user events which I presume mean that PrintMonitor is declining to cede time to other processes. I am quite sure it runs from the event loop, and not in an interrupt-driven way. -- Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com "I believe that bigfeet from outer space are stealing ships from the Bermuda triangle area. Prove me wrong." -- Bob Dainauski, RAD101@psuvm.psu.edu, on sci.skeptic