🚀 go-pugleaf

Some recent postings by suhler@im4u.UUCP (Paul A. Suhler) and 
!uw-entropy!king (king @ UW MathStat, Seattle) discussed problems creating
postscript files using the laserwriter drivers on the Mac. Some excerpts 
include:

>> I'd talked to an Apple engineer about how the Chooser refuses to
>> turn on AppleTalk after the ImageWriter has been used without a
>> reboot in between.
>>  
>> Hey, Apple, this is a bug!  I have a modem on the modem port,
>> an IW on the printer port, and I like to be able to hop into
>> LW to create PostScript files for uploading.  Any chance of a fix?

>Yes it is a bug and an annoying one, but creating a PostScript file
>is done in an absurd manner anyway.  Maybe this is a good time to
>propose a more user-friendly method for generating Postscript files.
>The cryptic clover-key method is a real pain; it is easy to forget
>and impossible for new users to guess (sounds like another well-known
>brand of PC!).  
>
>Why not have a "printer driver" accessible from the Chooser (like the
>Glue software) that if chosen would save a Postscript file instead of
>really printing.
>
>Alternatively, there could be a PS option in the Print Dialog box.

First, a trick that helps (somewhat).  Get a copy of the old control panel
that included the option of turning Appletalk on and off.  Rename it using
Resedit to something like "Old Control Panel,"  (so you can still have the
new control panel available).  Before accessing the chooser
to select the laserwriter, fist turn on Appletalk using the Old Control Panel.
Make sure your Imagewriter II is turned off or it may go crazy thinking it is
talking to Appletalk (doesn't seem to be a problem with the IW 1 however).
This trick doesn't always work (sometimes the Mac still refuses to turn on
Appletalk) but I've usually been able to get things working (sometimes it 
helps to designate the port for the Imagewriter as the modem port before trying
to turn on Appletalk).

Secondly, I'd like to vehemently support the discussion about how warped the
method of generating postscript is.  Besides being totally non-Mac like, I've
wasted countless hours trying to get the generated postscript to print.  Apple's
scheme of downloading a dictionary of macros to the laserwriter makes life
very difficult for Laserwriters not on Appletalk networks.  Our Laserwriter
sits off a datakit network connected to Unix VAXes.  We have no trouble 
printing postscript files generated with troff on Unix, but printing the Mac
generated postscript files is not easy.  Downloading the header file (using
the Cntl-k trick) didn't seem to work but eventually we found the modified
header files created by Brian Powell brian@sally.utexas.edu and
Ron Hitchens  hitchens@sally.utexas.edu that can be prepended to the normal
postscript (Cntl-f) for printing on the laserwriter.  This all worked okay
(we had some trouble with the Laserwriter 4.0 driver and only used the 3.1
driver) until we purchased a non-Apple postscript printer.  Despite days of
work, I still can't print most documents on this new printer.  Everything works
fine when the non-Apple printer is on an Appletalk network, but downloading
the generated postscript works only on the simplest files.

Apple's decision to permanently load the dictionary in the Laserwriter suffers
another problem.  It forces all users on an Appletalk network to use a single
Laserwriter driver.  Although I have no personal experience with this, I suspect
problems might arise if the Appletalk Laserwriter is shared with non-Mac
machines generating postscript.  At the least, the dictionary takes up
valuable Laserwriter memory in this shared environment.  With Apple's push
for "connectivity," their inherent assumption that both the Mac and the
Laserwriter sit on a common Appletalk network is quite limiting.

Postscript has the capability to define completely self-contained printing
commands that should be machine independent.  In fact, the programs from
Powell and Hitchens prepend commands to the Cntl-f generated postscript to
create a self-contained unit (the macros are only defined for that single
print job).  Agreeably, some time is saved if the dictionary is permantly 
installed in the Laserwriter, and there is also the issue of downloading
fonts to the Laserwriter.  Apple's approach has some merits, but the user
should still be able to generate EASILY (i.e. what we normally expect from a
Mac) device independent, totally self-contained postscript
files.  In addition to making it easier to print on non-Appletalk Laserwriters
and non-Apple postscript printers, this would also simplify the process of
importing postscript descriptions into other programs - for example to print
a Mac generated figure in a troff or TeX file on a Unix machine.

Well, that is my 2 cents worth.


Brion


Brion Feinberg
(201) 949-5665 
uucp: ihnp4!hounx!brion
arpa: "ihnp4!hounx!brion"@decwrl.dec.com