[comp.sys.next] spooled LaserWriter problems

puh@sarnoff.com (Patrick Hsieh) (08/03/90)

Hi!  I hope you guys can help me out.  Mine is the lone NeXT machine in my 
group, and none of the systems people have much experience with it.

I have the NeXT connected to our local Ethernet network and have it set up 
to print by spooling to one of our Suns.  It sort of works, in the sense 
that sometimes things print OK, and sometimes not.  In particular, I ran 
dvips (300 dpi, memory set to 900000) on the emacs manual, and brought it 
up in the Previewer.  It looked fine, so I printed the first page.  The 
Sun showed the job in the queue, and eventually I got the header page, but 
no printout.  Is there some other setting that needs to get fixed to print 
reliably to Apple LaserWriters?

Also, is there a way I can get rid of the job header page?  Putting a :sh: 
in the printcap file and niloading it doesn't seem to do it.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!


Patrick Hsieh                                  puh@sarnoff.com
David Sarnoff Research Center

Some are like water, some are like the heat,   Alphaville
Some are a melody, and some are the beat,      "Forever Young"
Sooner or later, they all will be gone,
Why don't they stay young?

glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (08/04/90)

In article <588@grumpy.sarnoff.com> puh@sarnoff.com (Patrick Hsieh) writes:
>I have the NeXT connected to our local Ethernet network and have it set up 
>to print by spooling to one of our Suns.  It sort of works, in the sense 
>that sometimes things print OK, and sometimes not.  In particular, I ran 
>dvips (300 dpi, memory set to 900000) on the emacs manual, and brought it 
>up in the Previewer.  It looked fine, so I printed the first page.  The 
>Sun showed the job in the queue, and eventually I got the header page, but 
>no printout.  Is there some other setting that needs to get fixed to print 
>reliably to Apple LaserWriters?
>
>Also, is there a way I can get rid of the job header page?  Putting a :sh: 
>in the printcap file and niloading it doesn't seem to do it.

Look in the spool directory (/usr/spool/NeXT/printername, I think) and
look for the file ".options" that should be there.  If it's not there,
you can create one.  For details, type "man pscomm".

I think you can solve both problems with this file, potentially.  There
are flags that you can turn off for the banner page:

BANNERFIRST=0

There are any number of possibilities why the file won't print, but
assuming that the setup on the Sun is generally working okay, the
problem is likely to be with the file you send to it.  My guess is
that it is trying to reverse the pages, which can cause problems if
the PostScript isn't conforming.  To test this theory, change the
first line of the file so it contains only "%!", not the whole
"%!-PS-Adobe1.0" stuff.  That will prevent page reversal from taking
place.

If this turns out to be the problem, you can defeat page reversal in the
".options" file like this:

REVERSE=0

Give that a try.

Glenn

-- 
 Glenn Reid				PostScript/NeXT consultant
 glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us		Independent Software Developer
 ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn		415-851-1785

rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) (08/04/90)

In article <232@heaven.woodside.ca.us> glenn@heaven.UUCP (Glenn Reid) writes:
>In article <588@grumpy.sarnoff.com> puh@sarnoff.com (Patrick Hsieh) writes:
>>I have the NeXT connected to our local Ethernet network and have it set up 
>>to print by spooling to one of our Suns.  It sort of works, in the sense 
>>that sometimes things print OK, and sometimes not.  In particular, I ran 
>>dvips (300 dpi, memory set to 900000) on the emacs manual, and brought it 

The standard Apple LaserWriter doesn't have 900,000 bytes of free VM.
Try setting it to 130,000, or send the attached few lines to see how
much VM you actually have.  Try printing just the first page, too.

If it should happen that the Emacs manual is simply too complex (dvips
will complain of some pages being too complex), you can either try 
another printer (with more VM), or get dvips5.31 from labrea.stanford.edu.
It is set up to compile and go on the NeXT, and it uses somewhat (30%?)
less VM for most bitmapped fonts.

Mail to me for more help as necessary.   -tom

%! Hey, we're PostScript!
/Times-Roman findfont 30 scalefont setfont 144 432 moveto
vmstatus exch sub 40 string cvs show pop showpage