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=========== Wed.20.aug.2003.#?am =========

Reconnected gs8 Turboprint cli arguments

The gs8 Turboprint specific cli arguments have now been reactivated. They were originally disconnected because they would throw gs8 on completion of printouts.

I assumed everything they did could be done instead via Turboprefs, however it was pointed out to me a few days ago that what actually happens is that Turboprefs appends the arguments to the command line which is then fed back to gs8. As a result I needed to try and fix this.

Trying to do it the official GS way looks like a total nightmare, so instead I managed it via a straightforward hack: when gs8 is launched I make it study the command line and store to local env-variables the Turboprint specific arguments. Then after a lot of GS things have happened namely the loading of the different interpreters, when -sDEVICE=tp#? is launched I make the program read in the settings from the above env variables, these settings are stored in exactly the right place that -sDEVICE=tp#? expects to find them resulting in correct behaviour.

The reconnected cli arguments are:

-dDensity=1 to 7,

-dQuality=0 to 9,

-dZoomX=1 to 999,

-dZoomY=1 to 999,

-dMoveX=any number: units of 1/1000 inch,

-dMoveY=any number: units of 1/1000 inch,

Any arguments not in this list cannot be reconnected as they are involved in a very complicated fix that is necessary to make the gs8 -sDEVICE=tp#? devices function problem free and smoothly.

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Generic advice:

The first page of a PDF file often presents problems as people often put a large bitmap here which can exceed a printers RAM-size. The way out is to print from the second page onwards!:

gs8:bin/gs_2n -sDEVICE=tp24 -dFirstPage=2 xyz.pdf

Try printing the first page as a separate use of gs8, the following methods can be used for excessively large PDF pages:

1. Set a lower res. in Turboprefs

2. Use -sDEVICE=tp8g, this will reduce memory usage by 3 x!

3. Use -sDEVICE=tp1, this will reduce memory usage by 24 x!

To print just the first page:

gs8:bin/gs_2n -sDEVICE=tp24 -dFirstPage=1 -dLastPage=1 xyz.pdf

Example: it is impossible for me to print tiger.eps on my laser printer at 600dpi. The reason is my printer only has a 2Meg RAM, so the 600dpi row-compressed bitmap exceeds this ram by a small amount. The way out is to eg print at 300dpi.

(sun.27.jul.2003.evening)It seems I misunderstood what Luca said below, anyway I will be looking into what he mentioned.

Luca "Hexaae" Longone has asked why cant he set the Turbo specific cli arguments. The answer is that all Turbo settings need to be done now on Turboprefs. The reason for this is that the Turbo specific cli arguments were throwing GS8 eg on completion of printing a PDF file. Also some of the cli-args have been re-used as part of a fix to enable GS8 to function smoothly with turboprint. By replacing the Turbo specific cli args with the default GS8 cli arg mechanism the behaviour of the Turbo devices has become very clean.

I believe all facilities provided by GS5.10 cli args are duplicated via Turboprefs, so why not use Turboprefs GUI?

So its bye-bye Turbo cli-args and hello Turboprefs GUI!

I have had feedback from Michael Evans that he is printing successfully with gs8 and Turboprint on an A500 with 8 Meg + 33MHz 68020 + FPU + OS3.0! He says he was unable to print via GS5.10 as it is so memory hungry. One or two doc files still present a problem due to lack of memory. :so we are looking into this.
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