CompuServe Messages

On memory: the memory requester gives you two figures. The system free space tells you how much memory you have left. The largest block limits the size of a graphic which you can import. Say you have two megs of system space left, but only a 1 meg free block size. Then you try to import a 400K file which expands to 1.5 megs when uncompressed. This will not import (you'll get an out of memory error.) So, it's the system space which you should normally be concerned with. You don't have a lot free when using PgS on a 1 meg machine. That is why the manual recommends additional memory. (The 2.2 slipcover will even say 2 megs recommended.) Now when you are printing, memory is very important. PgS will attempt to create the page in one pass if there is sufficent memory to hold the entire page. It creates as much as it can and then sends it to the printer to flush memory. This is why you'll get create, printing, create, printing. PgS creates a band of data, sends it, then creates the next band. Now PgS needs to recreate the first band to see where to pick up, so the second band takes twice as long, the third 3 times as long, and so on. The more memory, the less passes PgS will have to make. If you only have 100K free when printing, PgS will take forever to print. If you have 25K free, you'll have to make the document smaller. So how do you get memory back? One way, is to ensure that the copy buffer is empty. You know, that black hole where text and graphics are stored for pasting. How do you do this? Highlight one letter and select copy. This will copy the one letter to the buffer, emptying that 100K picture you imported. 🙂 (2.2 will have a quickie way to empty the buffer. Now check the system memory and see how much you have left. Other things you can do are to disable all those nifty programs you have running in the background. That 80K screen blanker. I guess you could close down the workbench (I've never done this but I guess it's possible. I can never quit the workbench, I always have those huge background things running! 🙂 cont… SL Tech