Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I'm not sure I understand your problem.  Do you have DEVS: assigned
    to the hard drive?
    
    Can't you change the printer settings before printing from a particular
    application?  I can go from color to black & white with my Okimate
    20 printer without exiting the program, and the new settings always
    seem to 'take'.  
    
    Doesn't the Mac restrict you to either:
    
    a)  An Apple Imagewriter
    b)  A Postscript printer
    
    The whole idea of Preferences was to provide global support for
    any printer that has a correct driver installed on the system disk.
    This eliminates the need to install seperate drivers for every
    application.
    
    I hear that all the popular printer drivers are being re-written
    for WB 1.3 to allow for intelligent use of the printer's resolution
    to eliminate the jaggies.  Currently, a screen dump does an exact
    bitmap of the screen, which looks horrible on an 8.5 x 11 sheet.
    Most 24 pin printers can achieve 120 dpi or better, which should
    look pretty good.
    
    Some programs, like Vizawrite, have provided their own intelligent
    drivers for non-jagged screen dumps.                  
    
    

    
    I believe someone in this notesfile wrote/obtained a program to
    select a different system-configuration file ala
    
    1> setprefs dpaint:system-configuration
    
    This is the quickest way that I know of.  Personally, I think the
    preferences concept idea is nice, but the application software
    should provide an interface which can override the settings.
    Dpaint II does a fair job at this but it's still not good enough.
    
    The other unfortunate consequence of preferences is that the control
    of the graphic output quality has been taken out of the hands of the
    application programmer.  This again is a good theory, but I think it
    has held back the quality of amiga graphic printouts.

    - steve mcafee

    Randy, this is not a very relevant topic, but I think life may go
    easier for you (now that you have a hard drive) if you get a hold
    of DEFDISK.  DEFDISK is a global assign command; that is, it makes
    all logical assignments to the volume you choose.
    
    My hard drive boot disk has the following startup-sequence:
    
    Supramount
    dh0:c/run dh0:c/execute dh0:s/HDBOOT
    endcli > nil:
    
    The HDBOOT batch file looks like this:
    
    dh0:c/DEFDISK dh0:   ===> assigns SYS, C, SYSTEM, DEVS, L, LIBS, FONTS
                              to dh0:
    CD dh0:
    path system add
    path utilities add
    runback > nil: dh0:c/CONMAN -c -q
    runback > nil: MACH15 *******
    
    blah blah...
    
    Now, the hard drive is the default system disk, as though I'd booted
    from it.
    
    Ed.
    

    No, that doesn't take care of it.
    
    Here's the problem:  Pagesetter and Draw+ use different Printer
    Preference settings to print out.  The margins, lines per inch and
    page length are different.  In order to use them, or change from
    one to the other, it means going into Preferences, WRITING DOWN
    the existing settings, changing the settings, going back into the
    appropriate software...then printing.  If I go back into another
    package to print, I have to go back into Preferences, put back the settings
    that I wrote down earlier, and then print.  Not a lot of fun.
    
    On the MacII it is just a matter of selecting the appropriate selector
    within the software package.  You don't have to re-configure every
    time you use different software.
    
    Randy
                   

    Oh, I see... nothing's actually broken, then.  It's just that the
    programs can only pass info to Preferences, and Preference has it's
    own opinion on how the output should look.  I agree, thats a pain.
    Preferences sounds good in theory, but really seems a bit limiting
    on a multitasking machine.
    
    Some programs allow you to change settings within the program, for
    example Textcraft gives full control over margin settings, line
    and character pitch, etc.
    
    

    Use setprefs and define various files PageSet.prt, DPII.prt, etc.
    Run the appropriate one when appropriate.  CTRL-LEFT AMIGA-N
    will pull up Workbench and CLI from within an application enabling
    you to run setprefs without exiting.

    I agree...this sounds like the way togo for all these progs that
    assume they are in total control...(ie booted off their disk)...
    
    If you cant find the program, a little hack I posted re: pointers
    should get you going...ie just read the file, and write to the systems
    preferences parameters, bypassing Preferences program...its in the
    MVCAD3::user0:[amiga.arc]mouseoff.arc file....
    
    scott.

    
    
    	If you use icons to start your programs, one way is to use
    XICON to make a new icon that sets the preferences and then starts
    the program. I have not used this for printers, but I have solved
    a problem or two when two programs use the same logicals. I also
    use them to make Icons to setup differnet working areas.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    Hi,
    I have a problem not really releated to the others in this topic but
    putting it here will save me starting a new one. I 've got an Epson
    compatible printer connected up to the parrallel port on the Amiga.
    I've used preference to set the printer type to Epson and everything
    seems to work fine, margins, graphic dumps etc. The problem I've got is
    that I'm using A4 standard sized paper and there is no A4 paper size on
    the preferences menu. So I selected custom paper size and gave it a
    length of 70 lines. The problem is that the command to set the page
    length is not being sent to the printer, either when the machine boots
    or when I use the InitPrinter tool. I can set my printer to dump all
    the data it recieves as hex numbers so I can see what control codes it
    gets and none are being sent to it to set the page length. Now I'd
    really like to use the perforation skip feature and be able to form
    feed to the correct place so does anybody have any ideas on how to get
    preferences to set the page length.

    Thanks in advance,
	Colin.

    p.s. can anyone tell where I can get info on reading the system
    configuration paramaters ?
    

    I would suspect, Colin, that it's the printer rather than the Amiga
    that needs to know the page length. If you consider printing a page
    of 30 lines, these 30 lines are printed and then a ^L is sent -
    the trouble is the amiga thinks the ^L is 'worth' 40 lines but the
    printer only thinks it's 'worth' 36 lines. Is there a DIP switch in
    the printer to set paper size ? If not, is there an escape sequence
    to send to the printer to set paper size ?
    If there's no DIP switch and there is an escape sequence, you could
    use the PrtDrvGen utility on Fish #90 to modify your printer driver
    to put the escape sequence into the printer_init sequence.
    
    				Alan