Scott Raney :
> OK, now *I'm* confused. The UNIX versions of MetaCard can generate
> PostScript and it wouldn't be hard to add this ability to the other
> engines, but I guess I don't really see the point: only a very small
> fraction of printers out there even support PostScript, so why would
> you want to use that instead of MetaCard's built-in printing
> capabilities, which work with all printers on Windows and MacOS
> systems?
Well, I have a different experience : most of my clients are also involvedin
various DTP / multimedia activities, and there are ALWAYS at least 1
or 2 PostScript printers on their LAN.
Furthermore, using PS or PDF files has some benefits :
- total & ultrafine control of the data downloaded to the printer
- lighter apps (no need to build a special card with layout of various
text fiels & images to emulate what you want to have on paper)
- faster download time (and less risk to clutter trafic on the LAN)
- much faster printing time...
Here are a couple of examples (again I'm rather new in MC development
and those examples are from my experience with HC & OMO, but I think
the issues they adress are equivalent).
1) for one of the last OMO app I did, I was asked to include a print
function for various documents (invoices...), and the client's wish was
that his company logo (an EPS file) appears at the top left corner of each
document. I was only able to import the PICT ressource into an image
object, and when printed, it featured lots of ugly jaggies...
Being able to import the PS code would give 100% perfect result...
2) way back in the early 90's I was chief editor for a technical mag
published by Apple France. The mag was available in 2 formats :
a regular mag printed on paper, and a floppy disk (750 Kb) with a HC stack
containing all articles & illustrations of the mag, plus various search
& index functions. End users could subscribe to the mag alone, or the
mag + the floppy, or the floppy alone. For those on got the HC version
only, we thought it would be nice to be able to print articles with the same
layout as the mag. So I built a script that was able to generate PostScript
files on the fly (from the data contained in the HC stack and
displayed on screen) and download it to a PS printer using the SendPS
XCMD (from the Rinaldi collection). I also included in the prologue of the
PS file an hyphenation algorithm (that weighted only 6 Kb !!!).
The mag itself was made with QuarkXPress, and at first we thought we
could use the PostScript outputs, treat them and generate the content of
the HC stack. But (until version 3.1) the PostScript generated by XPress
was complete crap (it didn't follow any Adobe guidelines), and therefore
was generating incredibly huge files that used to take forever to download
and to print, while my own PS files were slim and used to print at lightspeed.
In conclusion, the SendPS XCMD worked very fine, but on Mac only.
As most of the developments I have to do these days must run on Windows,
I can't use that solution...
For instance, right now I have 6 pending (and roughly similar) projects :
small data bases containing specs & infos about various products, and the
user can access those DB through search functions, and display individual
products datasheets and eventually print them.
What I want to do is build a script that sends requests to the DB and then
builds on the fly a PS or PDF file around the found infos and download
it to the printer (in the same way as you can build HTML on the fly and
send the data to a client via a socket)...
> Then why not just print them from a PDF viewer or something? You
> can't print PDF files directly to a PS printer anyway. As I recall
> there's even a command-line option to these programs on Win32(\p, I
> think it was) so that you could do this from "shell()" or "open
> process". It's pretty straightforward to do this on the Mac with
> AppleEvents too. It's not straightforward at all on UNIX, however,
> but that's because nothing to do with printing is ;-)
You know, most of clients who pay for a CD-ROM app developpment(as well as all
potential end users for that app) already found rather
cumbersome to have to install QT before using the app. So I can't
imagine telling them they'll have to use another piece of software
just to print their documents. A simple "print" function available as a
button or a menu item is what they ask for.
It is such silly little details that makes the difference between me and
some of my competitors (on some projects) who try to convince the
client to develop under Director instead...
>
>
> > Hope things are more clear now...
>
> Another interpretation of your original question I think would be that
> you're asking for some script-based equivalent to "answer printer"
> that you could be used to find out what printers are available on the
> network and what capabilities they have and to open one of your
> choice so that you could write raw data to it.
Exactly. I couldn't describe it better !
> This is already on the
> feature request list, but there just aren't that many applications
> that could use something like this and so it hasn't been given a very
> high priority. For the vast majority of apps, "answer printer" is a
> far better way to do things.
Well, then I might be an alien... ;-)
Seriously : I would need such a feature for about 80% of the apps I'm
asked to develop these days... No kidding !
And again : offering such great printing capabilities is often the kind of
little detail that makes you beat your competitor who's trying to convince
the client to use Macromind...
Regards,
JB
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