Amiga ISO Collection

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Amiga ISO Collection / AmigaUtilCD1.iso / Printer / studi214.lha / Studio_Update_V2.14 / README < prev

Wrap

Text File | 1997-01-07 | 23.9 KB | 548 lines

Studio Professional Update V2.14 This update is for all Studio V2.11, V2.12 and V2.13 users. It updates the current Canon Workbench driver and provides additional support for the latest Canon printers. It updates the Studio printing program and PageStream 3.1/3.2 Studio driver. For users of Deskjet 500C and Deskjet 550C compatible printers an output module for the printing program is now installed. Using these Deskjet 5xx modules allow you to print faster and maximize the print area. If you own V2.10 or an older version of Studio, please contact your distributor for an update. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Here is the list of the latest Studio distributors: Germany: Australia & New Zealand Deutschland: GSoft Australia Pty Ltd. arXon GmbH PO Box 59 Assenheimer Str. 17 Elizabeth SA D-60489 Frankfurt Australia 5114 Germany Tel: 08-284-1266 Tel: 069-978410-26 Fax: 08-284-0922 Fax: 069-978410-30 (English Version) (German Version) The Netherlands: North America: MacroSystem NL Safe Harbor Computers Tromplaan 1 W226 N900 Eastmound Drive 3951 CL-Maarn Waukesha Tel: 034344-2969 WI 53186 Fax: 034344-3103 Tel: 414-548-8120 Fax: 414-548-8130 (English Version) (English Version) United Kingdom: Belgium: HiSoft Click! b.v.b.a. The Old School, Greenfield Boomsesteenweg 468 Bedford MK45 5DE 2610 Wilrijk Tel: 0525-718181 Tel: 038281815 Fax: 0525-713716 Fax: 038286736 (English Version) (English Version) France: Spain: Phoenix-DP Almathera TU Amiga Ordinadors BP 801 Plaza Pedro IV No 4,7-3 64008 Pau Cedex 08120 La Liagosta Tel/Fax: 059829500 Barcelona Tel: (93) 560 3604 Fax: (93) 560 3607 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Notices for Deskjet users The installation program on this disk will offer you Deskjet 500C and Deskjet 550C output modules for the Studio printing program. These modules should also be used by compatible printers. The modules allow faster printing and maximize the print area used of your printer. The Deskjet500C and Deskjet 550C module is installed but not selected for you by the installation program. If you want to use the newly installed module, you MUST select the module using the "Select Module..." menu item in the Studio "Outut" menu. Once done, please realize that you are now printing without using a Workbench printer driver and thus, the settings in DeskPref/4C are not used anymore. All settings used by Studio are now done in Studio. Again: use Config... in the output menu of Studio. As the output modules usualy maximize the print area of your printer, it is recommended to adjust the paper size settings in Studio once the output module was selected. This can be easily done by using the "Max Page&Print Size" menu item in Studio. Deskjet 500 users: please note when installing the Deskjet 500C output module you will also get two new profiles for printing on plain paper using Blue Noise and Ordered 256 dither method. The profiles replace the old profiles and do offer much better quality. The old profiles are renamed to "Deskjet_500C_NormalII" and are still available in the Match window in case you don't want the color of the output to change (even if the new output is much better). ------------------------------------------------------------------ Notices for Canon BJC users You must have a Studio CanonBJEC driver and CanonBJECPref installed in order to get the driver updated by this update disk. So first install your Canon driver using the standard Studio disks. And the usual important note: if you do use the CanonBJ-EC driver, make sure the color adjustment of the driver does match your used print resolution, dither method and paper. By default, the CanonBJ-EC driver is setup for your printer using normal paper. You can also setup the driver to some presets using the menu of CanonBJECPref. Canon BJC 620 users: Canon BJC 620 users should use the 100% compatible BJC 610 software that came with your Studio V2.11/2.12/2.13 disks. There is no difference regarding the supported commands of the printer. The main difference between the BJC 620 and BJC 610 is the print speed. Studio V2.10 and older users need the Studio V2.11, V2.12 or V2.13 update disk "Part II" in order to get the BJC 610 software, wich is shipped with Studio since V2.11. If you experience strong stripes/banding of 1mm height in your BJC 610/620 output: make sure you run the print head alignment test as described in the BJC manual. Also make sure the print head is ok. Perform a printer nozzles test as described in the manual and clean the print head several times. In some cases it can help to print 20-30 fully colored pages if the print head was new. The stripes are not caused by the printer driver. However, your print mode, dither method and paper used are important. Don't try to print high resolution on bad paper. You rather get worse results compared to 360 dpi dumps. If you do experience 1mm height stripes, try switching the dither method. The BJC often prints less horizontal stripes when using an error diffusion (Floyd, Stucki,...) or Blue Noise dither method. Canon BJC 150, 210 and 240 users: These users should carefully note: These printers can't print color graphics and text on the same page. The printer can only print color in the Extended Emulation wich is set using CanonBJECPref's "Emul" gadget. Different to earlier versions of the CanonBJ-EC driver, the new V6 driver automaticly switches to Epson emulation at the start of a page for printing internal text. This means, you basicly can set the driver to Extended Emulation. You don't have to worry about the printer being unable to print text using the printer internal font under Extended Emulation. The driver automaticly switches emulation for you as required. But this only works at the top of a page. In order to print with CanonBJ-EC using the Photo Ink Cartridge, set the "Mode" gadget in CanonBJECPref to "PhotoGraph Mode". Don't print using this mode using a normal ink cartridge. Always use the photo ink cartridge (BC06) with this mode. And don't forget you have to adjust the color adjustment for this different cartridge. As usual, there are presets available in the Preset menu of CanonBJECPref. Canon BJC 4100, 4200 and 4550 (= 4xxx) users: Please note that printing 720*360 dpi using the CanonBJ-EC Workbench driver requires major color adjustments. Use the CanonBJECPref menu presets for adjusting the driver for 720dpi support. Note that the Canon BJC 4xxx will only print 720*360dpi graphics in BJC mode (extended emulation). For best image dumps on the Amiga use Studio's CMS for printing 720*360dpi. Presets are available for various papers using the CanonBJECPref program. BJC 4xxx users should use the BJC 4000 profiles with the printing program for printing 360dpi. In order to print with CanonBJ-EC using the Photo Ink Cartridge, set the "Mode" gadget in CanonBJECPref to "PhotoGraph Mode". Don't print using this mode using a normal ink cartridge. Always use the photo ink cartridge (BC22) with this mode. And don't forget you have to adjust the color adjustment for this different cartridge. As usual, there are presets available in the Preset menu of CanonBJECPref. The new CanonBJEC driver Now some info on changes made to the driver wich are not yet covered by the manual: 1. The new V6 CanonBJ-EC driver now overrides the dither setting defined by an application or the Workbench printer preferences program unless you select a density below 3. So basicly, you now don't have to care about the dither method set in printer preferences unless you use a density below 3. This also means things are more simple: The CanonBJ-EC V6 driver behaves like a stupid driver if you select a density below 3. In this case, none of the drivers advanced color correction or dithering is used during printing and the driver mainly offers the plain functions of most original Workbench drivers. But if you do select a density above 2, you can be pretty sure now that the driver's features are enabled and work correctly as the driver overrides all bad settings that might be caused by Workbench preferences or the application. This means, at density above 2, the driver always uses the dither routine and color adjustment defined in CanonBJECPref. It disables the printer device color correction. 2. The driver disables the color correction of the printer device. This color correction should never be used. Again, this is only true as long as you select a density above 2. 3. The driver is now able to automatcily switch between Epson and Extended emulation. So you can now set the Canon driver to Extended emulation using CanonBJECPref and you don't have to switch back to Epson emulation just to print some text using the printers internal font. However, there is still a limit by the printer: you can't print text using the printer font and graphics using extended emulation on exactly the same page. So, the printer driver can only switch emulation at the start of a page. However, please see the error chapter if you run into problems when using Extended emulation (mainly an "empty page" problem). 4. The CanonBJ-EC driver now uses the much advanced dither routines of Studio V2.13. As a result, the quality and the speed especialy of the more complex dither routines has been dramaticly improved. Also, the driver now offers more dither routines: Blue Noise 30% (Serp.) Blue Noise 50% (Serp.) Burkes Burkes (Serpentine) Floyd Steinberg (Serp.) Jarvis (Serpentine) Sierra2 Sierra2 (Serpentine) Sierra3 Sierra3 (Serpentine) Stucki (Serpentine) Here are some typical print times measured with Final Writer (a full DIN A4 page of text was printed with a small 2*2 cm colored logo): CanonBJ-EC V5.4 Canon BJ-EC V6.0 Speed Increase OrderedA256 140 sec 140 sec 0% Blue Noise 30% 400 sec 150 sec 267% As you can easily see, the new drivers complex dither routines are not much slower than the fast Order type dithering. Take care: the speed of the new driver mainly depends on the page contents printed and the dither routine used. You can easily see print speed increases by 300-400% if the page is not fully covered by all colors. Note: the dither routines are able to detect blank areas in the output even if this area is surounded by color. 5. Preferences DIN A4 setting is now causing the driver to use the printers maximum print area (ie. 2880 instead of 2804 dots at 360dpi). This is not the correct way, but most drivers (including most of the original Workbench drivers) do it this way and it seems to center the output better. If you must have the old setting back because your created documents print with an offset and updating the documents is too much trouble: define a custom DIN A4 page size (that is, set Custom ResX to 2804). 6. The driver now uses it's own simple UCR/GCR function (wich is 100% compatible to the printer device routine, but faster). As a result of this, users black adjustments for color printing might have to get readjusted when used with error diffussion or blue noise dithering. The SetupBJL Program For some Canon users a SetupBJL program is installed (by the time of this writing: only for the Canon BJC 4xxx and BJC2xx). The program SetupBJL may also be named SetupBJL-BJC4xxx or similar identifying the printer to use with. The program can usualy be found in your systems Prefs drawer beside the drivers CanonPref program. The SetupBJL program may be used by Canon BJ and BJC users for controlling the printers permanent settings. It also allows you to perform certain printer functions like test dumps and ink head cleaning. The use of this program is very similar to the MS-DOS or Windows program described in your printers user manual or DOS print guide. This chapter will only cover the additional Amiga specific functions of the setup software. See you printer manuals for more details. In most cases the printer is shipped to you by the manufacturer already setup right for use with the Amiga. Anyway, if you start SetupBJL for the first time, it's recommended to run the Setup For Amiga/EU action first. This will setup the printer for you automaticly. Please note: the default setup often sets the printer page length to 22 inch in SetupBJL. This is NOT a bug and totaly correct as this reflects the printers internal setting after a complete reset. SetupBJL can be started with various Tool Types or Shell arguments: USEPOWERON: If you specify this keyword, the SetupBJL program will unghost the Auto On feature. Please note that this feature should only be used with the new BJC 240, 4200 and 4550 printers. When used with older printers like BJC 210 and BJC 4100, strange problems can arise (like being unable to turn off the printer manualy). However, if you like, you can try the feature with older printers... often it does work even on those older printers fine. However, people wrote me lot's of letters because of this feature in the past, even though the docs told about problems. So in order to make things safe, it's off by default for those old printers. PUBSCREEN: SetupBJL opens a window on the default public screen. You may specify a special public screen by setting the Tool Type "PUBSCREEN=screenname". The screen name is case sensitive. and the SetupBJL program will open its windows on your application's screen. TOPAZ: SetupBJL is font independent. All text is displayed using the system font. If TOPAZ is specified, only the topaz 8 font is used. SAVE: When using this option, SetupBJL will set-up the printer without showing the set-up window first. This is useful for controlling printer settings from batch files. You can enable certain printer settings without user interaction by using the FROM option in combination with SAVE. Settings can be saved from SetupBJL by using the Save As menu item. SetupBJL will automaticly quit after 10 seconds if your printer is off or not connected. FROM: SetupBJL saves the settings sent to the printer in a file named SetupBJL.prefs, placed in the same drawer as the SetupBJL program. Next time you start SetupBJL, the current printer settings are read from this file and displayed. FROM allows you to specify a different settings file for reading. You can save other settings files than SetupBJL.prefs using the Save As menu item. DEVICE: SetupBJL usually sets up the output device defined in Workbench 2.04 printer preferences. Since Workbench 2.04, nearly any output device can be defined in preferences for printer output. Usually serial.device or parallel.device is used. You may alter the device using the case sensitive DEVICE Tool Type or Shell argument. UNIT: Workbench 2.04 (or higher) Printer preferences programs may enable you to specify a printer port unit to print to. Most of the current multiport cards enable you to specify a port to print to using a unit number (0 = internal port, 1 = external port A, 2 = external port B ...). Using the UNIT tool type or Shell keyword you can define a unit (port) to print to. POWEROFF: When using this option, SetupBJL will turn off the printer without showing the set-up window first. This is useful for controlling the printer from batch files. SetupBJL will automaticly quit after 10 seconds if your printer is already off or not connected. SetupBJL saves the settings sent to the printer in a file named SetupBJL.prefs, placed in the same drawer as the SetupBJL program. Next time you start SetupBJL, the current printer settings are read from this file and displayed. This method works only so long as SetupBJL is used for all printer setting changes and is not moved to another directory without the SetupBJL.prefs file. SetupBJL offers some printer functions and settings not available in the MS DOS software: Setup For Amiga/EU This Printer Action function will setup the Canon printer for use with the Canon Amiga Workbench driver. The setup is for use with DIN A4 sized paper wich is mainly used in Europe (EU). Setup For Amiga/US Same as Setup For Amiga/EU for use with US Letter sized paper. Enable Hex Dump This Printer Action will set the printer to hex dump mode. Auto On When enabled, the printer will automaticly turn on if you try to transfer data to the printer. The option is usefull in combination with the Auto Off setting. It allows you to let the printer automaticly turn itself on and off as needed. Please note that turning on your computer can cause the printer to go on too. This is a normal behaviour with Auto On enabled. Turning your printer on and off too often is also no good idea. The printer does consume a small amount of ink for a cleaning procedure everytime it is turned on. It is recommended to use the Auto Off feature with at least 10 minutes. WARNING: there have been some reports of Canon BJC 4100 and BJC 210 printers refusing to turn off manualy after turning off the computer. If you do have such a problem with your printer, turn "Auto On" OFF. Similar reports do exist with printers set to an Auto Off value of 1 minute. If you do encounter strange problems, make sure Auto On is Off and a time is set above 1 minute for Auto Off. See the USEPOWERON option described above for more details. ------------------------------------------------------------------ STUDIO PRINTING PROGRAM The printing program uses profiles as described in the Studio manual in order to perform a color correction for your setup. The profiles are made specificly for a certain setup. When choosing profiles, you should be aware of following compatibility: Canon BJC 210 is compatible with Canon BJ 2xx. Canon BJC 240 is compatible with Canon BJC 210 and BJ. Canon BJC 610 is compatible with Canon BJC 600. Canon BJC 620 is compatible with Canon BJC 610 and 600. Canon BJC 4200 is compatible with Canon BJC 4100 and 4000 Canon BJC 4550 is compatible with Canon BJC 4200, 4100 and 4000 This means, a BJC 4200 user should/can use the BJC 4100 profiles. Usualy, you'll only find profiles for new and changed features of the same printer series. So, you usualy use the BJC 4100 and BJC 4000 profiles on the BJC 4200, unless you want to print using the new Photo Ink Cartridge. In this case, you should use the new BJC 4200 profiles. In order to print using the Photo Ink cartridge, you must have the necessary output module installed for your printer. If your printer does support the feature, a "PhotoGraph Mode" Density 1 will become available in Studio for printing. Note that the printer always prints in 360dpi when using the Photo Ink Cartridge. The "Print Mode" setting configured for the output module will not be used, as the Photo Ink cartridge assumes HR 101 paper. So, you can setup the output module for your normal paper and print using any density except 1 with the normal print mode and cartridge. You can switch to Photo Ink by simply exchanging the cartridge in the printer and selecting density 1 ("PhotoGraph Mode") in Studio. Studio V2.14 now supports the BMP (sometimes called Windows DIB) image format. Supported BMP formats are Windows BMP version 3 and OS 2 V1.x, V2.x and others: 1, 4, 8, 16 and 24 Bit. Uncompressed, RLE 4, RLE 8 and RLE 24 compression without delta is supported. Multiple image (or array) BMP's are supported and the first image from the array is used. As usual, BMP images are printed from disk without need for much memory. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 01.01.97 V2.14 CanonBJ-EC V6.0 WB Driver (06.12.96): - Support for BJC 150, BJC 620, BJC 240, BJC 4200, BJC 4550 added. - DIN A4 size changed from 2804 to 2880 dots. - Support for Photo Ink Cartridges added. - Mirror function improved - unnecessary >68020 code removed to make driver smaller - Driver now uses it's own UCR/GCR function - Now uses Studio dither routines (much faster and better quality) - New dither algorithems added (mainly Serpentine versions of error diffusion dithers. - Treshold dither was used with user color adjustment. Fixed. - Setting file changed for new dither routines - NULL command is now ignored for FF detection (possibel empty pages are now avoided if applications sents NULL (DPaint)). - Driver now automaticly switches between Epson and Extended Emulation if required. - Transfer(), DoSpecial() completly rewritten. - Driver Presets added and improved CanonBJ-EC V6.1 WB Driver (01.01.97): - Photo Ink Dither routines are now written in assembler (+20% more speed). SetupBJL V1.11 (27.11.96): - Renamed to BJC 4xxx and BJC2xx - USERPOWERON added as shell option Studio V2.14 Print Program (01.01.97) - recompiled using near code model. - memory for dither structure for preview wasn't free'd in V2.11 and V2.12 - Pointer array for landscape rotation was to small in V2.12 - 4 bytes trashed - BMP image format support added. Supported BMP formats are Windows BMP version 3 and OS 2 V1.x and V2.x: 1,4,8, 16 and 24 Bit. Uncompressed, RLE 4, RLE 8 and RLE 24 compression without delta is supported. Multiple image (or array) BMP's are supported and the first image from the array is used. - Left white margin check in multilevel BNoise dither routine of V2.11, V2.12 and V2.13 was not correct and caused a slowdown. The bug affected only very slightly the print speed - nothing else. - Multilevel dither routines restructered. Studio now 40KByte smaller because of this. - BNoise and Order multilevel dither routines now written in assembler (20% total speed increase!). - Deskjet 550C and 500C output modules added. - Fixed a bug in color printing with PCL 5C and some printers unable to deal the code. - Output modules now watch data send to the printer in order to avoid timeout problems if print data compresses to well. - PageStream 3.1 and 3.2 Studio driver did not print correctly if an unprintable margin was entered in PageStream. Fixed in Studio driver Ver 3 Rev 1. - BMP support added to CMSScan V2.14 (01.01.97) COPYRIGHT/DISCLAIMER Copyright ©1991-97 Wolf Faust. All rights reserved. The Studio update disk has been provided to you strictly 'as is', without warranty of any kind. In no event shall Wolf Faust be held liable for any loss or damages arising out of any action, from whatever source, concerning the use or inability to use the software. You may not use, copy, or transfer the product, or any copy or portion, without prior consent in writing from Wolf Faust. The disk can be distributed via AmiNet, CompuServe or CIX as long as no payment for the software is asked. Any other distribution is strictly forbidden. Installer project icon (c) Copyright 1991-93 Commodore-Amiga, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced and distributed under license from Commodore. (Continue by pressing 'Q')