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From: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: S - L - O - W  Printer Device
Message-ID: <1321@cadovax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Jan-87 17:03:50 EST
Article-I.D.: cadovax.1321
Posted: Mon Jan 12 17:03:50 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Jan-87 18:53:33 EST
Reply-To: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle)
Organization: Contel Business Systems, Torrance, CA
Lines: 51

References:


.........

A couple of friends of mine have recently bought Epson LQ-800's for their
Amigas.  We found a driver on Compuserve, and the source to one either there
or somewhere else.

Come to find out that a graphics print takes a good 35 minutes.

I know that we are talking a 24 pin print head here, but that's a little
out of hand.

We also tried timing how long a print takes with a driver that has been
stubbed out to do nothing.  It seems that it is not in the driver where
it is spending the majority of it's time.

My guess is that it is spending most of it's time in the 'printer.device'
re-sampling the image to fit whatever is selected as margins in the 
preferences.  While this is an important feature (and not found in the
MacIntosh, you only get x1 and x.5 and a hi-quality and draft mode) it
causes output to be incredibly slow in some instances.

Has anyone re-written a 'printer.device' to not try to re-size to fit,
but just assumes a certain minimum DPI and does a x1, x2, x.5 etc.?
This would be compatible with existing applications (which is important).

I know there are some packages (PrintMaster + for example) that bypass
the Amiga device drivers entirely and provide their own, where the
package will talk directly to the parallel port.  Though this is certainly
faster, if your printer is not supported by the application then you
are SOL.

I realize the Amiga's best feature is it's video.  And that is why I bought
an Amiga.  However, I keep seeing my friends struggle with trying to get
decent print out in a reasonable amount of time.  If it isn't DPaint forcing
screen-compatible aspect ratio on the image causing text to look terrible,
it takes days (30+ minutes to print an image is pretty bad, you have to 
admit).

So what's the answer?  Is it possible to come up with an alternate
'printer.device' that will bypass all of the nifty resize features in
the interest of speed (or text quality)?  

And why isn't anyone else complaining about these problems?  They seem
to me to be much more significant than the speed of the icon files on
the workbench.  Is everyone just using the Amiga for games and video?
I'll admit I think printing and word processing is pretty boring myself, but 
I kinda expect any self-respecting computer to do a decent job of it anyway.

Keith Doyle
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