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Text File | 1997-01-07 | 19.6 KB | 431 lines

PageStream 3.2 beta 6,7,8,9 PageStream 3.1 beta 10 PageStream 3.1 + 3.2 Final STUDIO DRIVER This Update contains a Studio driver for PageStream 3.2 beta 6,7,8,9, PageStream 3.1 beta 10, PageStream 3.1 + 3.2 Final. WARNING: the PageStream driver installed by this disk must not be used with PageStream 3.0i or PageStream 3.1 beta 1,2,3,4,5. Users of these older and outdated PageStream versions can get a proper Studio PageStream driver from their Studio distributor, AmiNet (StudioAppDriv3.lha in text/print) or CompuServe's AmigaUser forum. The driver allows direct printing from PageStream using the Studio or CanonStudio printing program with all it's features. Note: This driver is not made by your PageStream manufacturer Soft-Logik. So don't ask them for help with this driver. Flame me, not them. And if it turns out to be a problem of you or PageStream, you can bet flames are forwarded/returned :-) Email to CompuServe: Wolf Faust 100116,1070 Internet: 100116.1070@compuserve.com Thanks ------ First a big thanks to Soft Logik (Michael Loader and Gary Knight) for making this driver possible. Without knowing the PageStream application library and driver interface, this and future drivers are not possible. Introduction: ------------- This PageStream 3.x driver allows printing using the Studio or CanonStudio print program. Studio and CanonStudio offer printing 24 Bit using a color management to a Workbench driver. Using the Studio color management you can adjust all output colors. For instance, you can generate a profile giving you Pantone colors. So using this Studio driver with PageStream 3.x, you are able to get high quality output basicly from any printer. The software also adds a spooling and many other functions to PageStream. More about the added features laters... Requirements: ------------- PageStream 3.2 beta 6, 7, 8, 9, 3.1 or 3.2 final version Note that you need different Studio drivers whenever the PageStream printer driver interface get's changed by Soft-Logik. The next PageStream update version might work fine with the the latest Studio driver as the driver interface of PageStream is not changed that often. But this depends on Soft-Logik. So before you update PageStream, make sure you select a different printer driver in PageStream as the new version might not work with the old Studio driver. After the update try using the Studio driver. If it doesn't work anymore, you will need an update of the Studio PageStream driver. This can be found on CompuServe's AmigaUser forum library or can usualy be found on AmiNet with 1-2 weeks delay after the release of the new PageStream update. + Studio 2.11 (or higher) or registered CanonStudio (all Studio explanations below also apply to CanonStudio). + an additional 1-2 MBytes RAM for the Studio printing program. + as much free disk space as possible for the included spooler. Installation: ------------- FOLLOW THIS INSTALLATION INSTRUCTION - Click on the install icon using the Workbench. - Follow the installation guides given by the install program. The installation program will first update your printing program. It will than search for a possible PageStream installation and install the printer driver accordingly. - After succesfully installing the Studio PageStream 3 driver, start PageStream. - Select the "Printing..." menu item in the "Settings" menu. - Select "Studio" as driver type. - Click on the "Edit Print Presets" gadget. The known Studio user interface should appear on the PageStream 3 screen. If the user interface doesn't appear, see the comments in the "Problems & Fixes" section below. - The print settings in the Studio program reflect the default settings for your printer after installing the program. If you want your personal settings get used, use the Settings/Open menu item to load your default Studio.prefs settings file. More on the settings issue later. - Select the Config/Max Page&Print Size menu item. This will make the print area use the maximum page size allowed. This area will be used by Studio for printing from PageStream. - Save your Studio settings permanently using the "Save Settings" gadget in the main Studio window. - Confirm your Studio settings by clicking on the "Print" gadget in the main Studio window. Don't get confused because the gadget is labeled "Print" instead of "Use". - After clicking on the "Print" gadget, you get back to the PageStream "Printing..." window. Now select a temporary drawer using the "Temp Files" string gadget (or click on the drawer icon to the right in order to get a standard Amiga requester. The given drawer should point to a fast hard disk. Because the Studio driver uses the drawer for spooling, the disk should offer a large amount of free disk space. How much free space is needed greatly depends on the print size, print resolution and the document being printed. So here is a recommendation that gives you the minimum amount you should have for a trouble free print: 2 MBytes for a 360dpi greyscale printer 15 MBytes for a 360dpi color printer 30 MBytes for a 720dpi color printer As said, these are recommended minimum values - not necessities. The driver might work with less, but it will run faster and without trouble with more free disk space (3 times more is a good starting point). Depending on the user response to this driver, we might lower the disk space requirements in a future driver version. - Now you have done the basic setup. Click on "Save" or "Use" to make your settings active. Than simply print. What is the "Temp Files" setting for? ------------------------------------- So how does the Studio PageStream driver print? The driver will act as a link between the Studio printing program and PageStream. The Studio printing program can print images to basicly any Workbench driver in 24 bit precission. Studio also offers custom drivers wich are not limited by the Amiga printer.device. The PageStream driver will safe the output as an image in a spool drawer. Once written, the spool file containing the wanted output image will be forwarded to Studio for printing. The Studio PageStream driver needs your print sizes in order to tell PageStream the output resolution and more. So if you select "Print" in PageStream, the status window of Studio will appear in the top left screen border. The status window will stay on the PageStream screen until you either close it or quit PageStream. Once printing has started, PageStream generates the print data and safes it to the spool drawer. The print performance greatly depends on the speed of the disk as the spool files can get very big. Both, PageStream driver and the Studio printing program, do access the spool file using double buffered asynchronous file read/write routines. The PageStream Studio driver forwards the print job to Studio after generating the spool data. After doing so, you can continue working with PageStream while Studio prints the spool file containing the output image in background. However, you have to wait until printing is finished if your spool drawer doesn't offer enough disk space for complex pages. This should explain why it is so important to assign the "Temp Files" drawer to a fast hard disk with lot's of free space. The "Edit Print Presets" gadget: -------------------------------- Clicking on the "Edit Print Presets" of the Studio PageStream driver will pop-up the known Studio user interface on the PageStream screen. Please note that Studio needs a small amount of chip and fast ram to do so. If you are running low on memory after starting PageStream, you might easily run into problems with getting the Studio server started. You can adjust all print parameters using the Studio user interface. Please note that the print dimension defined reflects the used print area of your printer. So make it as big as possible. This can easily be done by using the Config/Max Page&Print Size menu item. Depending on the output driver, this menu item might have problems adjusting the maximum height of the print area as no maximum page height is given. There are some things to note: - The user interface of Studio might feel a bit slower than usual. This is mainly a result of the Studio user interface showing up on the PageStream screen. Sorry, there is nothing I can do to improve this. - Landscape printing is currently done by PageStream. So PageStream is rotating the image for you. You can select LandScape printing using the Studio user interface. The orientation setting of the PageStream driver will be set accordingly automaticly. - The "Print Priority" setting in the Studio menu can become pretty importand on the way you print using Studio. If you want Studio to print in background, it is recommended to set the priority to the default "Low" value. This means, PageStream will generate the print data as fast as possible and once done, Studio will pick start printing in background. You can continue working with PageStream and Studio will use the remaining CPU time for printing in background. Note, printing in background only works, if your "Temp Files" drawer offers enough free disk space. Otherwise you have to wait for Studio to finish printing before continue working with PageStream. The "Average" print priority is usefull if you want Studio to compete for CPU time with PageStream. - The "Memory Usage" setting in the Studio menu is important if you don't have enough memory in your computer to have both, PageStream and Studio, running at the same time. Set the item to "Low" if you are run out of memory. Because of the way PageStream generates the print data, it might be a good idea to lower the memory requirements of Studio in order to give PageStream more memory to generate the print data faster. But before doing so, I would recommend doing a real test using your printer and a stop watch. Use your usual print jobs for the test. Simply check if the low memory usage setting does improve print speed. People with enough free RAM usualy don't have to worry and use the Average memory usage setting for maximum speed. - The PageStream Studio driver accesses the Studio/CanonStudio printing program using the Studio server interface. All settings made withing the Studio user interface after clicking on "Edit Print Presets" are safed in a settings file named "PageStreamStudioPrt.prefs" in the Studio_Prefs drawer. So your usual Studio settings safed in Studio.prefs are not altered by your PageStream adjustments. This way you can have to different adjustments without having to switch manually. For instance, you can usualy print images to an expensive dye sub printer using Studio. But when printing using PageStream, you can setup Studio to print to another printer wich fits your DTP needs better. If you want to use your usual Studio settings with the PageStream driver, use the Settings/Open menu item to load your default settings in the Studio.prefs file. - After adjusting all settings using the Studio user interface, you can click on the "Print" gadget in the main Studio window. Actually, the "Print" gadget should be labelled "Use" gadget. We will fix this minor user interface problem in a future version. If you want the settings permanently saved, use the usual "Safe Settings" gadget. The "Unprintable Margins" setting: ---------------------------------- Once you adjusted the print area using the "Edit Print Presets" gadget, PageStream knows the print resolution and print size of your printer. However, PageStream doesn't know the unprintable margin of your printer. In order to make the PageStream ruler match your printed page, adjust the unprintable margin until ruler matches your printers output. Please note that all Studio PageStream prior to version 3.1 had a bug causing the unprintable margin setting to fail. When using these older drivers, make sure the unprintable margin is set to 0 - or better - update your driver as soon as possible. Problems & Fixes: ----------------- There are many things that can go wrong when it comes to printing. You also might get confused by some things happening when printing using the Studio PageStream driver. This section describes things to note: - Printing takes forever.... After PageStream completes safing the spool data, the Studio status window will become big and display the print job forwarded from PageStream. Depending on the print priority defined in Studio, the print progess made by Studio can be very very slow during the first minutes as PageStream might still be busy with the next print page at a higher priority. Don't get nervous. Once PageStream has finished generating the print data, Studio will pick up the free CPU time and thus printing will get real fast. In other words: don't count on the remaining time shown in the Studio status window while PageStream is still rendering print data. The remaining print time will greatly decrease once Studio gets more CPU time. Because of the optimizations done by Studio, the remaining print time displayed can vary greatly even without PageStream taking all free CPU time. - The Print Server can't get started or you don't get a response? The Studio PageStream driver needs to know where to find your Studio printing program in order to start it. The path and filename of your Studio printing program is stored at installation time in the STUDIOPATH environment variable in ENV: and ENVARC:. The PageStream driver will be unable to locate the printing program, if you remove the environment var or change the path/filename of Studio/CanonStudio. If you change things, you can update the STUDIOPATH enviroment var by hand or by installing this update again. The install program will make sure STUDIOPATH is defined correctly. Another reason might be lack of memory, either fast or chip memory. Both, Studio and PageStream, have to be running on the same screen at the same time. If you don't have enough memory for doing so, forget using this driver (or better, get more memory). - Your system crashes when clicking on the "Edit Print Presets" or select "Print" in PageStream? While this never happened during the testing of the driver, I just want to make sure you know this shouldn't happen if both Studio and PageStream have enough stack. Usualy the default stack size given is enough. You can increase the stack size using the Workbench Tool/Information menu item. - Incorrect output Please note that Studio uses the PageStream rendering routines. If something in your output seems to be not correct, try a native PageStream driver (Workbench driver?). If the problem appears with both, Studio and PageStreams Workbench driver, the problem is most likely caused by a problem of the PageStream rendering routine. - Random dots in solid colored areas of your output? Please note that the Studio color management tries to match you output colors to the screen colors. This sometimes can cause problems if you want a specific appearance in the output. An example: let's assume you want a yellow filled boy with the color RGB values 255/250/0. On your screen, the rectangle will appear as pure yellow. But in the output this box will appear as a yellow rectangle with very disturbing red dots. This is correct and not a fault of the software. Your original RGB color 255/250/0 does contain a small amoung of red and thus the output will have red dots. So if you make business graphics with pie charts and similar things, you might be better off disabling the color managament of Studio and increase the gamma/brightness slider in the color adjustment window until the brightness of the output is acceptable. This usualy gives you more solid colored areas. The output color is most likely not correct this way, but this is often unimportant for business graphics. For Experts: But the best solution to fix the problem completly is using the Studio color management. Instead of disabling the color management, you should adjust the color profile used. This can be done using CMSEdit. There is pretty nothing you can't adjust using the CMSEdit program. Using CMSEdit you can assign an output color to a screen color. This way, you can control the amount of color fault in the output while still having solid areas printed without to much disturbing dots. But a warning: adjusting a profile in this manner can take much time. The main problem is, that all adjustments must be made by eye/hand. No device can really help you as only you know what looks best in the output. A solution that often gives you satisfactory results without too much work is, to load a greyscale profile into CMSEdit and convert it to a color profile. This can be done by CMSEdit for you. Once done, simply check all colors with a disturbing amount of small colors in the output. Remove or increase the amount to get a solid area. Got the idea? - Random dots and lines in the output? When printing using error diffusion dithers, dots can be printed that appear in as "lines" or "worms". This can be very disturbing and is a result of the error diffusion dithers. Why do they appear? The lines that look like worms appear when printing a small amount of a primary color on a binary printer. An example: your printer can only print black or white dots. The printer can't print greyscales. Now in order to print greyscales, you selected the error diffussion dithers. Let's assume the grey printed is 2%. Studio doesn't print any dot in the first line as it can't print 2% grey. Instead it prints nothing and notes an error of 2% (thus the name error diffussion dithers). So your output is 2% brighter than it should be. The next line will be printed white again and the error increases to 4%. This continues until the error reaches 50%. Now the error diffusion dithers print a line of black and an error of 50% is noted. But this time your output is 50% to black. This scheme continues and after a while a line is printed. These printed lines, that often look like worms - can be disturbing when printing solid colored areas. The problem can (partly) be solved by using applying the error diffusion dither using a serpentine raster scheme. Another, much better method, is to add some white noise to the dithering. Such a solution is performed by the Blue Noise dithering. Note: the lines don't appear when printing using order dither algorithems. If they do appear, than they are not cause by the problem described above. As said, it's a general problem of error diffusion dithering. Driver History: --------------- 09.06.96 V1 - First release 24.06.96 V1.1 - "Unprintable Margin" could not get altered. Fixed. 01.08.96 V2.0 - Version for PageStream 3.1 beta 2,3,4,5, 07.10.96 V3 - Update for: PageStream 3.2 beta 5,6,7,8 PageStream 3.1 (final) PageStream 3.2 (final) 20.12.96 V3.1 - Fixes bug in unprintable margin handling of driver. - Required free disk space for spool device lowered for background printing. Background printing is now much more likely on choosen spool devices with low free disk space.