rabbit@eddie.mit.edu (Warren J. Madden) (06/21/91)
Greetings, netters! I recently purchased a Personal Laserwriter LS. I finally had the time to get it all set up and installed with my IIsi running 6.0.7. I decided to give the thing a workout by printing out a game manual that I had online in Microsoft Word. My version of Word is 4.00C. I set the fractional widths option, and printed a page (the manual is mostly two-column output, with no graphics, Times font). The printer took about 15 minutes to chew on the job, and then spit out a page that had _very_ strange alignment between letters. So I turned the frac. widths option off, and printed that page again. No problems. Fine. So now I tell it to print the whole 40 page file. This is at 10 pm. I figure it will take a couple of hours, so I go out for an ice cream. I come back at midnight, and it's printed five pages. Hmm. I decide to go to bed, sure that it will be done by morning. Page 18 appeared while I was taking my morning shower. I went off to work, very puzzled and slightly perturbed. Page 34 came out as I was listening to my messages after arriving home from work at 7 pm. In disgust, I went out for the evening. The job finally finished sometime during the following few hours. I estimate it took 24 hours to print a 40 page, two column, Truetype document. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!? I didn't expect the printer to be a speed demon, but this is ridiculous! Please, somebody tell me what I'm doing that is causing this to be such a dog. I didn't think I needed a big, expensive Postscript printer for my personal use, but now I'm not so sure that I made the right move in buying the LS. HELP!!! Warren J. Madden rabbit@eddie.mit.edu
guelzow@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Andreas J. Guelzow) (06/25/91)
In article <1991Jun20.224729.28255@eddie.mit.edu> rabbit@eddie.mit.edu (Warren J. Madden) writes: > I recently purchased a Personal Laserwriter LS. I finally had >the time to get it all set up and installed with my IIsi running 6.0.7. >I decided to give the thing a workout by printing out a game manual that >I had online in Microsoft Word. My version of Word is 4.00C. I set >the fractional widths option, and printed a page (the manual is mostly >two-column output, with no graphics, Times font). The printer took >about 15 minutes to chew on the job, and then spit out a page that had >_very_ strange alignment between letters. So I turned the frac. widths >option off, and printed that page again. No problems. > > Fine. So now I tell it to print the whole 40 page file. This is nice story about icecream etc. deleted > The job finally finished sometime during the following few hours. >I estimate it took 24 hours to print a 40 page, two column, Truetype >document. > > WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!? You fail to mention how much memory and what kind of Macintosh you have. It would also be helpful to know whether you had background printing on or not: The main work when printing on an LS is done by the computer and only the bitmap is compressed and downloaded. The speed can therefore also be affected by any other programmes you may have running (e.g. disk express II working on a 100 meg disk, etc.) Anyways on a Mac Plus with 4 meg it seems to take Nisus up to 12 minutes to print a page including several truetype and ATM fonts and Expressionist pictures. Similar pages required about 4 minutes on an old Appletalk Laserwriter. -- Andreas J. Guelzow <guelzow@ccu.umanitoba.ca> Department of Mathematics & Astronomy University of Manitoba
dana@are.berkeley.edu (Dana E. Keil) (06/25/91)
I note that the original poster said he had Word 4.00C. I'm not sure if this explains the problem, but there is an upgrade to Word that is at least 4.00D (my shipment said it was 4.00H, but the program itself still says it's 4.00D) that comes with a TrueType init that is meant for printing TrueType with Word. Contact Microsoft for the upgrade. -- Dana E. Keil Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics dana@are.berkeley.EDU University of California, Berkeley