dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) (05/17/91)
Help!
I just bought a used Imagewriter II printer. One of the things I want
to use it for is to print in color. (Obviously my standards aren't very
high!) This is for my kids to play with, and maybe sometimes me too. I
equipped it with a 4-color ribbon and have since been trying to find a
way to print in color.
What I have tried so far:
-------------------------
PixelPaint Prints in black & white. The manual says PP is too good
to print on a Imagewriter II.
UltraPaint Prints in black & white.
SuperPaint 1.1 Prints in color...and you can choose which color....
Color MacCheese Prints in black & white, then bombs. The manual says it
can print color on any color printer.
Desk Paint Prints in black & white. Manual specifically states it
will print in color on an Imagewriter II.
Desk Draw Prints in black & white. Manual specifically states it
will print in color on an Imagewriter II.
Flash-It Will copy a screen image to the printer in black & white.
Vision Lab Shareware, Print command disabled.
Gif Converter Shareware, Print command disabled.
Quick Gif No Print command.
Kid Pix (OK, I'm getting desparate!) Prints in black & white.
Carpet Prints in black & white.
Nisus Prints color text fine, imported PICTs in black & white.
Once it printed something imported from DeskDraw in color,
but I don't know what was different to make this happen.
Finder The Print Directory, in icon view, prints ICN#s whose
colors have been set in the Finder. Full-color icons,
set by SunDesk, are not printed at all.
My System:
----------
This is a MacIIsi with 5MB of RAM, running System 6.0.7 and Finder.
The print driver is Apple's "Imagewriter", as provided on the System
6.0.7 disks--there is no separate driver for an Imagewriter II
anywhere that I could find, and I've looked hard. I've tried most
everything with the monitor in both 16-color mode and 256-color mode.
The printer is an Imagewriter II with a color ribbon, without
Appletalk; the manual says it can print in color.
My questions:
-------------
(1) What am I doing wrong?
(2) Is it really so hard (from a programmer's point of view) to print
color on an Imagewriter II?
(3) Is there some inexpensive program I can get that will at least
print out PICTs or some other common format? (Any halfway reasonable
mapping into the few colors available will do just fine.)
Since at least three of the programs I've tried claim in their
documentation to be able to do this, I'm strongly inclined to believe
that I have something set up wrong. However, since Nisus (usually)
prints color text just fine, I'm inclined to believe the hardware is
not at fault, so it must be the software.
BTW, I have seen color printing allegedly done on an Imagewriter II,
so I know it's not impossible.
This is a Mac, it's supposed to be easy, darn it!
-- Dave Matuszek (dave@prc.unisys.com) I don't speak for my employer. --
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| When I was young, my family bought a color TV. Our neigbors, who |
| were poorer, had only a black-and-white set. They bought a piece of |
| cellophane, red on top, yellow in the middle, and blue on the bottom, |
| and taped it over their screen, so they could claim that they had a |
| color TV, too. |
| Now there's Windows 3.0. |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------chai@hawk.cs.ukans.edu (Ian Chai) (05/22/91)
In article <17635@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes: >I just bought a used Imagewriter II printer. One of the things I want >to use it for is to print in color. [stuff deleted] >My questions: >------------- >(1) What am I doing wrong? You're not using an Apple //GS 8-) > >(2) Is it really so hard (from a programmer's point of view) to print > color on an Imagewriter II? Beats me... since the original "black & white" quickdraw supported the kind of color that IW2 prints, supposedly if you handed it that kind of color PICT, it should print fine. I think that's how, for example, Superpaint, Excel, etc prints in color. > >(3) Is there some inexpensive program I can get that will at least > print out PICTs or some other common format? (Any halfway reasonable > mapping into the few colors available will do just fine.) Yes, get CheapColor (I think it is on Sumex... if not, ask archie -- I know I got it from somewhere on the net so archie probably knows.) > >Since at least three of the programs I've tried claim in their >documentation to be able to do this, I'm strongly inclined to believe >that I have something set up wrong. However, since Nisus (usually) >prints color text just fine, I'm inclined to believe the hardware is >not at fault, so it must be the software. I ran into problems with a friend's copy of MacCheese too, even tho the manual said it could handle "any color printer". (This was MacCheese 1.05, and I hear there's a newer version out now -- I decided not to get MacCheese in the end, so I didn't investigate further.) I think what MacCheese might have been thinking of is "any color postscript printer" as there's a standard output language with the new postscript printer driver handles that does color. > >BTW, I have seen color printing allegedly done on an Imagewriter II, >so I know it's not impossible. > >This is a Mac, it's supposed to be easy, darn it! Yeah, really! Come on, before the Windows people say, "See!" -- Ian Chai Internet: chai@cs.ukans.edu Bitnet: 2fntnougat@ukanvax I don't believe in flaming. If I appear to be flaming, either (a) it's an illusion due to the lack of nonverbal cues or (b) my sprinkler system has suffered a momentary glitch, so just ignore me until it's fixed.