goussard@sipi.usc.edu (Yves Goussard) (03/19/91)
I recently got the Mac Classic / HP DeskWriter I ordered three months ago. They work fine, but the printer is VERY slow and I started looking into background printing options. Hardware solutions seemed preferable to me as they survive system evolution better. Naively, I believed that connecting the printer to the Mac with AppleTalk would solve the problem, but after trying this solution out, I realized that the "Background Printing" option is not included in the "DeskWriter With AppleTalk" driver. Does anybody know whether HP has any intention of including this feature into the driver in the near future? If not, is there any shareware type of spooler that works reasonably well and that I could get not too painfully? Thanks in advance for any hint. Please mail your answers. I will summarize and/or post them. Yves Goussard Goussard@sipi.usc.edu
Fabian@cup.portal.com (Fabian Fabe Ramirez) (03/20/91)
Yves, Consider SuperLaserSpool 2.02 from Fifth Generation Systems. Fabian Ramirez SuperMac fabian@cup.portal.com
goussard@sipi.usc.edu (Yves Goussard) (03/30/91)
Thanks to all the people who provided me with the information I needed. Here is a summary of the answers I received. > I recently got the Mac Classic / HP DeskWriter I ordered three months > ago. They work fine, but the printer is VERY slow... This lack of speed is due to the fact that the Mac creates a bitmap image of the printed page in its own memory before sending it to the printer. As indicated by Dave Platt (ntg!dplatt@apple.com): :: The DeskWriter drivers (like other QuickDraw-based drivers) must render :: your page image into memory before sending it to the printer. It :: renders it as a 300 dpi bitmap... requiring about one megabyte for a :: full page. It must also grab memory with which to build the :: high-resolution bitmaps of the outline fonts it uses while printing. Therefore, two factors may increase the printing speed. (1) Allowing enough memory for the application to build the bitmap of a whole page. If no spooler is used, the memory size of all applications must be increased by about 1 Mbyte. If a spooler is used, and if the spooler is at the DA level (it is the case for MultiSpool), the space is taken from the memory allocated to the system. As this memory is allocated dynamically, all one has to do is make sure that the system memory can grow to about 1 Mbytes more than its usual size. For small configurations (memory <= 2 Mbytes), this means that very few applications can be open at the same time for the printer to perform well. (2) Reduce the CPU load required for rendering the bitmap. Steve Henning (smh@cbnewsm.att.com, Prodigy ID RHCC62A) tested printing speeds for various configurations of the driver. For high quality printing, it appears that the highest speed is obtained when Adobe Type Manager is turned on, font substitution on, and high quality printer fonts off. If ATM is not available, the best configuration is ATM off, font subdtitution on and high quality printer fonts on. > ... I started > looking into background printing options. Hardware solutions seemed > preferable to me as they survive system evolution better. Naively, I > believed that connecting the printer to the Mac with AppleTalk would > solve the problem, but after trying this solution out, I realized that > the "Background Printing" option is not included in the "DeskWriter > With AppleTalk" driver. Does anybody know whether HP has any intention > of including this feature into the driver in the near future? ... Apparently, including the feature in the driver is possible, and has been done for the PaintWriter (Robert K Shull, rob@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu). However, no information on whether HP intends to do so. > ... If not, > is there any shareware type of spooler that works reasonably well and > that I could get not too painfully? Two products have been mentioned in the answers I got: SuperLaserSpool, a commercial product from Fifth Generation Systems, and MultiSpool, a shareware which can be downloaded from sumex-aim.stanford.edu via anonymous ftp (directory info-mac/init). SuperLaserSpool (only versions 2.02 or higher support DeskWriter) sells for about $ 100 ($ 97 at the University Bookstore) and does not seem to have any major glitch. The only complaint that was reported to me is that in slows the Mac down considerably and sometimes runs out of memory. This is not due to the spooler, but to the CPU load generated by bitmap rendering. However, this certainly reduces the practical interest of any spooler. MultiSpool does have glitches, and several people indicated on the network that they were not able to get it to work. I tried it and it seems to work OK, either with AppleTalk or with a regular serial line. Several parameters must to be adjusted for proper operation. In particular, the spooler comes from sumex-aim in suspended mode, and it will not start until you turn it on. The major problem with this software is that trying to access it by clicking on its menu-bar icon or on its window under MultiFinder hangs the system. The spooler should always be accessed via the Apple menu. Both SuperLaserSpool and MultiSpool require version 2.1 of the DeskWriter driver, also available from sumex. Yves Goussard Goussard@sipi.usc.edu