steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) (06/20/91)
I've had several suggestions about speeding up system 7. Most of them didn't apply (I didn't have virtual memory turned on, etc.). I've increased the cache to 512 to see if that helps. The IIci has a separate video board; using the onboard memory for video could, it was suggested slow things down with system 7. Turning off file sharing had little effect on speed, and it isn't acceptable since I need to access the IIci over our network. Someone asked me if I installed on a clean drive. I didn't, but I had to reinstall after removing my old system since I was getting results which looked like a corrupted system file. I doubt that the disk is fragmented since I recently defragmented it before upgrading to system 7. I won't be able to do that again until SUM II comes out with a new version. However, the most annoying thing is the slowness in printing. I sent two similar simple text documents to our laserprinter. One from my Mac II running 6.0.4 took 20 seconds to begin printing. One from our IIci running system 7 took 45 seconds to begin printing. Assuming that the printer processing time is roughly constant, that means that system 7 is taking 25 seconds longer to get the file off. Both are printing in the background. Presumably the difference would have been even greater with system 7 on the II and system 6.0.4 on the IIci. Did Apple rush to get system 7 out before optimizing its performance? If not, can anyone explain what is going on or, better yet, suggest a way to speed things up? Not many of us paid $100 for system 7 to turn our Macs into slugs. Steve Goldfield College of Engineering UC Berkeley
bellamy@covax.commerce.uq.oz.au (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun19.175431.27097@agate.berkeley.edu>, steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) writes: > >[stuff deleted] > > However, the most annoying thing is the slowness in printing. > I sent two similar simple text documents to our laserprinter. > One from my Mac II running 6.0.4 took 20 seconds to begin > printing. One from our IIci running system 7 took 45 seconds > to begin printing. Assuming that the printer processing time > is roughly constant, that means that system 7 is taking 25 > seconds longer to get the file off. Both are printing in the > background. Presumably the difference would have been even > greater with system 7 on the II and system 6.0.4 on the IIci. > Compare the sizes of the spool files created. Sys 7 is MASSIVE. I recently did a test. A three (3) line file with three fonts: NewYork, Times, & New Century (Word 4.00b). The postscript file generated was 603K Ignoring other effects, this will take longer to send, particularly over LocalTalk What's the story Apple. -- David E. Bellamy Email: bellamy@covax.commerce.uq.oz.au Dept. Commerce, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, AUSTRALIA
howie@triton.tamu.edu (MATT_K_HOWARD) (06/20/91)
Many of you have written about slow printing under the system 7.
After reading that even trivial print jobs produced "HUGE" print
jobs I tried it myself. I typed about 20 characters in QUED/M
using Monaco 12. I used the "PostScript file" option in the print
dialog and produced a 507K file. I examined the contents of the
postscript file and have convinced myself that along with laserprinter
initialization routines there are the instructions and data for
downloading the true-type font set to the laserwriter.
I'm no postscript expert but if you will allow me to speculate out loud
then this is what I think is going on.
1.) I'm not hooked to a laserwriter. The operating system cannot determine
the state of the intended printer so it plays it safe and pre-appends
the laser initialzation routines (these use to reside in the laser prep
file of pre-system 7 systems.) Furthermore, since I used a true-type
font, the font descriptions are added, perhaps all of them. Hence the
postscript file is huge.
2.) If you send a job to a laserwriter that has just been powered up or
the previous job was sent by a cpu using pre-system 7 print drivers,
then new initialization data and true-type font descriptions will be
pre-appended to your job causing you delay.
3.) This "first-job" overhead seems to be about 500-600K. This will
be very noticeable on the lower power Macs, less so on those with
more zip.
4.) Previous posts have said that beginning with system 7 "postscript file"
print jobs "ALL" have the prep data added. Previously, with the proper
keyboard grip the user could cause or prevent the laser prep file from
being pre-appended to the postscript file. Perhaps the truetype fonts
will always be added as well. (FYI Laser prep data is about 22 Kbytes,
True-Type fonts appear to total 600K roughly).
5.) I believe that those of you experiencing the slow printing problem
under system 7 are having problems because your files are huge and
that they are huge for the reasons presented above. This should be
normal behaviour for the first system 7 print job that a printer accepts.
Subsequent print jobs should then process in a much speedier fashion
since the printer will now already contain initialization and font
data. Perhaps someone who has been experiencing this problem could
send the same print job twice and report back here to the net their
results.
----
Matt