#AMax-PostScript
17 messages in this thread
I've not been successful in sending PostScript files from AMaxII to my
postscript printer. I've tried both the Amiga-K postscript interrupt then
file dump and the Amiga-K and transfer to AmigaDOS/Copy to Par: methods.
Nothing seems to work. From looking at the PostScript# file, it looks like
AMax is putting out a graphic dump of the font – my printer times out
before it can process it all – instead of just call on one of the resident
fonts (Helvetica, Times, etc.) in the printer.
Has anyone successfully done this? What am I missing?
Also, I've installed Adobe Type Manager and it doesn't seem to be
recognized by the system. I have everything in the System Folder – why
isn't this working?
Finally, does AMaxII 2.5 solve any or all of these problems? Thanks.
Joe,
I haven't printed directly from AMAXII to a postscript printer. Since I
don't have the AMAXII + internal card for my A2000, I can't use any
appletalk equipped printers. I have printed postscript to a disk file and
then downloaded it to an imagesetter before via the serial and parallel
ports of the Amiga as an Amiga. What printer are you using? You mentioned
parallel PAR:. I've an artist friend who has never been able to print to
her HPII with postscript cartridge and AMAX. She just got the + card but
now needs to find the appletalk port for her printer. Another expensive
solution.
As for ATM, there are two files you put into the System folder, one of
them is dependant upon what type of CPU your using. If you use an '020/'030
then naturally you'll use the '020 version of ATM. Before ATM can work it
needs to find the outlines of the fonts your using. Either move these into
the SYSTEM folder OR if your using a CDEV like SuitcaseII to install your
suitcases of fonts put the outlines in the folders with them. I used to
have something like 400+ outline fonts in my SYSTEM folder, but SuitcaseII
can help control the fonts.
If your using the Font-DA mover Apple utility, open each font suitcase
you intend on using with it and open the system file inside the SYSTEM
folder. Then highlight the point sizes of the fonts and copy these into the
system file. Select SHUTDOWN and then RESTART and it should work for you.
If your using Pagemaker, launch the program and select a font and point
size large enough to cause the stair step effect and zoom in and try typing
some text. You should now see a vast improvement in type rendering
on-screen. I use it and it works well.
Chris
Chris –
I'm using a QMS PS810 – right now, I've got the printer hooked up to the
parallel port – and in AMax, assigned Port B to Parallel. I'm getting
nothing out of the printer – it just seems to process data for an eternity
and then stop. A simple Print Directory (from the File menu) postscript
file is 90K. Can this be right?
I'll have to double check my ATM set-up, but I'm pretty sure that I have
the correct version of ATM in the system folder along with 3 out of the 4
fonts that come with the program. What's weird is that when I turn off ATM
and restart I get a "No ATM" icon next to the Responder and Font Porter
icons briefly along the bottom of the screen, but when I turn ATM on and
restart, I get neither an ATM icon nor a Font Porter.
It seems very unweildy to have all the fonts in the System Folder – they
don't go in an ATM folder in the System Folder?
Thanks – Joe
Joe,
90K for a file directory, seems large, but is it donwloading a font to
the file? Doesn't the 810 have all three ports? Par, ser, and appletalk
with intelligent switching sense? I haven't really tried direct printing to
a PS device from within a mac application with AMAX. I would give Raymond a
call at Readysoft, he should be able to give you some help. As for ATM, I
don't use Font Porter, I believe I was using Suitcase when FontPorter was
released, it seemed clunky too. I believe you have to put the suitcases you
want to use in the System folder along with Font Porter, and then move them
out of it when no longer needed. SuitcaseII is much more convenient. You
don't need all the outlines in the System folder with it. You can keep the
screens and printers together in their own folder. Just use SuitcaseII to
install and remove font and DA suitcases on the fly. You have gone into
Chooser under the apple menu and selected a printer device? I suppose the
Laserwriter is as good a choice as any unless you got a specific one on
disk with the printer.
We may have set up our System folder incorrectly, but it worked fine for
us, when we ran the service bureau. All the outlines were in the root of
the system folder, we used SuitcaseII to move screens in and out, finally
we realized that the outlines would be found if they resided within the
same folder as the screens. We never did completely read the manual for
Suitcase, but now I have all my fonts (printers and screens) in separate
folders, suitcaseII loads them and ATM displays them fine. Now I have a
separate 80MB HD for my fonts directory. Each Adobe, Bitstream, and Cassidy
and Greene type family has its own Folder. Works OK.
Chris
Joe,
You didn't say what application you're using to make the PS files.
I made a small PS file from Pagemaker 4.01 and output it to POST which
promptly errored out on it. The offending item was after the %%BeginSetup,
it was letter. No other references to it were in the document, so I added
the % and made it a comment, POST interpreted the page without problem
after that.
AldusDict2 begin
%%BeginSetup
%letter <<<<<<<<<<<<<<THIS IS WHERE POST CHOKED! SO I MADE IT A COMMENT
mark
{
mark
1.0 1.0 .92 .76 .64 .54 .44 .36 .28 .2 .1 .0
counttomark dup 3 add -1 roll exch
2 sub mul dup floor cvi
dup 3 1 roll sub
exch dup
3 add index exch 2 add index dup
4 1 roll
sub mul add
counttomark 1 add 1 roll
cleartomark
} bind
What I would try with the QMS 810 is to send a postscript file of the page
to the printer via the serial port and a terminal program like MicrophoneII
with the MAC emulator, this way you will get feedback from the printer via
the serial port. And perhaps you'll find out why it is timing out. Using
parallel will not allow the printer to supply you with an error message. It
seems that it has errored out, and is merely waiting for the timeout in
order to reset. Also, I included the AldusPrep with my PS file, without it
the file won't print. The file sizes were large, with the prep file it was
117387 bytes without it 83302 bytes, this included downloading the font to
the file. It was single sentence, centered on a letter size page. So I'd
say yes, 90K is about right for a PS file.
Chris
Chris,
When I was trying to modify the Laserprep initialization file to run
through Post as part of init.ps, I found that it also choked on "letter" as
well as "B4" and other page sizes. What I did to make the problem go away
was to add the following to my init.ps file…i have no idea what it really
does, but files seem to print without errors. It may be worth trying,
rather than comment out the command, which you'll have to do each time you
make a Pagemaker file.
I inserted the lines just below the line:
=string 256 string def
line in Post's init.ps (it's just after the comment line that reads % A
scratch string…:
letter (letter) def a4 (a4) def b5 (b5) def lettersmall (lettersmall) def
a4small (a4small) def b5small (b5small) def note (note) def
That addition also let me print ps files which came from wp5.1 using the
postscript driver.
Hope it helps; if you try it out, let me know, i'd love to hear of any
other modifications you (or anyone else) has made to the init.ps file. I'd
*love* to hear about anyone who's been able to get mac files with Laserprep
added to them to run through Post.
I also have added some of Don Lancaster's modifications (the "gonzo" stuff)
that he talks about on Genie on the PSRT. If you'd like to discuss any of
that some more, let me know.
One last thing, I finally figured out and have added routines in init.ps to
use HelveticaNarrow (also from Don Lancaster's routines).
.. Tim Trompeter…
Tim, Yes, I'd like to hear more about the modifications you've done to
init.PS. Tell me about the routines you've added to activate
HelveticaNarrow, and I'd like to hear more about Don Lancaster's routines.
Chris
Chris,
Here's a few changes I've made to the init.ps file. You may want to add
them; post seems to work just fine for me right now, but i'm not sure if
the additions have anything to do with that. I'll also send you a
postscript file which catalogs all the "Lancaster" stuff on GEnie. His
routines are pretty ingenious; and the more i study them the nicer they
seem to be. He's written, for example, a few "free fonts" which are
routines that, for example, let you surround a font with a black box.
There's another one that imitates the Adobe Copperplate font.
Anyway, why don't you look at this example, and maybe try to run the
catalog file (i'll e-mail it to you) after you've added the HelveticaNarrow
stuff to your init.ps. Make sure that if you use a script file and postlj
(which is what i do; postlj sits in my c directory and "ps" is an alias
I've added to my shell-startup file to run postlj correctly from the
cli…it sure makes my life easier to use postscript!
Here's the modification to the /statusdict which adds a revision #
and setdefaulttimeouts
… % A dummy status dictionary
… /statusdict 10 dict dup begin
… /waittimeout 0 def
… /checkpassword { 0 eq } bind def
… /product (Post V1.7) def
… % I added the next two lines…
… /revision (48) def
… /setdefaulttimeouts (300) def
… end def
and here's what i added for the HelveticaNarrow fonts; just paste it in
after the comment that's the first line here and should already be in your
init.ps file.
… DefaultFontName /Courier def
… % serverdict begin 0 exitserver
… % I commented out the above line and added this here as an
experiment…
… /makenarrow{ % stack: newname
… /newname exch def
… /basefontdict exch findfont def %Get base font dictionary
… /newfont basefontdict maxlength dict def %Create dictionary for new
font
… basefontdict %Copy all entries from base
… %font dict except for FID
[ MORE ]
[ continuation ]
… { exch dup /FID ne
… { exch newfont 3 1 roll put }
… { pop pop } %Ignore FID pair
… ifelse
… } forall
… newfont /FontName newname put %Install new name
… newfont /FontMatrix basefontdict
… /FontMatrix get [0.82 0 0 1 0 0]
… [0 0 0 0 0 0] concatmatrix put %Install narrower matrix
… newname newfont definefont pop %make into a PostScript font
… } bind def
…
… /Helvetica /Helvetica-Narrow makenarrow
… /Helvetica-Bold /Helvetica-Narrow-Bold makenarrow
… /Helvetica-Oblique /Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique makenarrow
… /Helvetica-BoldOblique /Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique makenarrow
…
I commented out the serverdict stuff since i've never been able to get post
to work with it in!
Look for the lharc'ed file in e'mail from me in the next few days, and give
it a tryl.
There's a wealth of postscript programming tips i'd love to talk about once
you've given this a try. If for any reason it doesn't run for you, just
let me know and we'll get it going. I'm still hoping that someday some
intelligent person'll be able to modify post to use it as a device so we
can print directly to it. There should be some way to write an AREXX file
to sit in the background and wait for a file ending in .ps and then invoke
post to print it out, but i guess we'll just have to wait for that person
to show up! (unless i learn bunches more about arexx in the next few
months!)
BTW, i added a "…." in front of all the text i imported from turbotext;
it didn't seem to work via Whap!, and i don't know if that's a CIS problem
or a Whap! one…
Take care, and hope to hear from you soon!
.. Tim Trompeter…
Joe,
The MACs printer driver requires that you use Appletalk to talk to your
printer. You can't use the parralel or serial ports on the stock Amiga in
this fasion. This is one of the reasons for the internal AMAX II plus
card. There are, however a couple of real old postscript printer drivers
which are supposed to support direct connects to HP and postscript
printers. You may want to check into one of these. Maybe someone in one
of the MAC forums may be able to help you find a printer driver that
supports "direct" connections.
-Jonathan
Jonathan – I was curious about the need for AppleTalk – but the AMax manual
says just to ignore the "AppleTalk Not Connected" message. I've also heard
that the new printer driver that comes with System 7 (the laserprep) will
work – have you heard this? – Joe
Nope.
My printer happens to support both Postscript and HP emulations. I went
out and got a software package called Jetlink Express. It allows me to
print direct. The output is pretty good. I get 300 DPI output and with
TrueType fonts under system 7, you get full resolution output. If anyone
knows how to print to PS direct, let me know….
-Jonathan
Chris, Joe,
and to everyone concerned
About the LaserWriter driver of System 7.0 working with A-Max:
Yes, it is definitively true.
I use A-Max II on my Amiga 2000 and recently tried out the new A-Max II
Software Version 2.50. It does just fine in all regards.
Then I installed the LaserWriter and LaserPrep files from the Printer disk
of Mac System 7.0. This printer driver works without any problems under
the Apple System 6.0.5 that is installed on my A-Max.
When I tried several printouts from Word 4.0, the Apple Desktop and
PageMaker 3.5, I redirected the PostScript data into a capture file. In
order to achieve this you need no longer press <Amiga>-<K> but can select
"Print to File" in the LaserWriter page setup. I then dumped those
Postscript captures with Readysoft's "File Dump" to Port A (serial). For
the first time Mac-made pages came of of my postscript laser printer. I
use a QMS 800 + that is hooked to the serial port of my Amiga.
With this experience I can only recommend every user with a similar setup
who is suffering with the well-know postscript problems that have been
discussed in this thread so far to try to get his hand on the printer
drivers included with Apple's System 7.0. Replace the old printer drivers
with those, and the whole thing is very likely to work.
Hannes
Hannes – You just made my day. Were you able to use the 7.0 Laser files
under both the new 2.5 AMaxII software and the older version? I plan to
get the upgrade, but I would like to able to print now. – Thanks again, Joe
Joe,
I am quite busy right now, so I am not able to check the whole matter out
completely. Some brief tests however indicate that A-MAX 2.50 seems to be
necessary in order to profit from the new 7.0 printer drivers.
I started A-Max with the control software release 2.0 and did not succeed
in printing – neither from Word, nor from the Desktop or from PageMaker
3.5.
In the latter case (PM 3.5) I still do not always succeed, even with the
new A-Max software. This might have to do with the many options and special
controls the PageMaker software offers for Printing.
Generally it looks like it was necessary to switch over from "Aldus
control" to "Apple control" there. But as I mentioned, I am sorry not to
have the time right now to explore this in any more detail.
So at a first glance it looks like you will have to wait until you receive
your A-Max 2.50 upgrade. Unfortunately I have no better news for you.
Regards,
Ha^nnes
Hannes –
I was able to use the System 7.0 LaserWriter and Laser Prep with the
older AMax II (v.2.06 I think). Printed from Desktop, Word and with one
glitch, Excel. I think this does it!
Thanks for your help.
– Joe