Hi,

Several folks are having troubles printing and it seems that some
truetype fonts won't render with the Apple postscript render but if you
save it to disk and use Ghostscript or Adobe PostScript it does work (or
the ps2pdf website to convert to a PDF).

For now, if you go to print setup and choose an old PPD like the
Apple->AppleLaserWPlusv38.0. That printer for example doesn't support
TrueType fonts so PageStream will convert TrueType to Type3. See if that
gets things printing for you.

Let me know if that works or not.

Deron

--
Deron Kazmaier - support@pagestream.org
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.pagestream.org
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

Deron,

How about for those of us that don't use postscript printers? To date, I have
yet to be able to print anything out of any of the PgS betas. I'm
printing off to
my truly Epson Inkjet (an Epson Stylus CX5400, specifically).via USB.
No postscript. Although PgS appears to be attempting to send a page
to my Epson,
my print jobs are always put "on hold" due to some variety of printing error.

What I've been doing since the alpha versions when I needed to print
was use PgS'
PrintToPDF, but obviously that's not an ideal "permanent" solution.

Am I correct in assuming that at some point PgS printing functions will hook up
to our Mac's standard printer drivers so we can use our inkjets,
bubblejet and other
non-postscript printers? I'm assuming that's the idea, yet remain
slightly concerned...
it seems that whenever Mac printing IS discussed here or in the
version notes, it's
always with regard to Postscript printing only.

Thanks in advance for any answers you can provide on this

Regards,
Jeff Krispow.

>Hi,
>
>Several folks are having troubles printing and it seems that some
>truetype fonts won't render with the Apple postscript render but if you
>save it to disk and use Ghostscript or Adobe PostScript it does work (or
>the ps2pdf website to convert to a PDF).
>
>For now, if you go to print setup and choose an old PPD like the
>Apple->AppleLaserWPlusv38.0. That printer for example doesn't support
>TrueType fonts so PageStream will convert TrueType to Type3. See if that
>gets things printing for you.
>
>Let me know if that works or not.
>
>Deron

Hi Jeff,

First, like on Linux, PageStream prints postscript at all times. CUPS is
the underlying printing system that the Mac (and Linux) uses and it
renders PostScript. The difference seems to be that Apple uses CUPS, but
not ghostscript (I don't know that for sure, but as you may recall NeXT
was postscript bases and I'll bet they have used their own rendering code).

So you have a software bases postscript -RIP, and you are not left out
in this discussion!

The next question for you, is have your tried printing non-text only
document? Start with just a simple box, then try a bitmap picture.
Finally, try a few different fonts one at a time to see if you can get
any to print. If your problem is that you can't print text, then my
suggestion still applies to you. This is _not_ a perminate solution,
just trying to identify the problem.

Deron

> Deron,
>
> How about for those of us that don't use postscript printers? To date, I have
> yet to be able to print anything out of any of the PgS betas. I'm
> printing off to
> my truly Epson Inkjet (an Epson Stylus CX5400, specifically).via USB.
> No postscript. Although PgS appears to be attempting to send a page
> to my Epson,
> my print jobs are always put "on hold" due to some variety of printing error.
>
> What I've been doing since the alpha versions when I needed to print
> was use PgS'
> PrintToPDF, but obviously that's not an ideal "permanent" solution.
>
> Am I correct in assuming that at some point PgS printing functions will hook up
> to our Mac's standard printer drivers so we can use our inkjets,
> bubblejet and other
> non-postscript printers? I'm assuming that's the idea, yet remain
> slightly concerned...
> it seems that whenever Mac printing IS discussed here or in the
> version notes, it's
> always with regard to Postscript printing only.
>
> Thanks in advance for any answers you can provide on this
>
> Regards,
> Jeff Krispow.
>
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Several folks are having troubles printing and it seems that some
>> truetype fonts won't render with the Apple postscript render but if you
>> save it to disk and use Ghostscript or Adobe PostScript it does work (or
>> the ps2pdf website to convert to a PDF).
>>
>> For now, if you go to print setup and choose an old PPD like the
>> Apple->AppleLaserWPlusv38.0. That printer for example doesn't support
>> TrueType fonts so PageStream will convert TrueType to Type3. See if that
>> gets things printing for you.
>>
>> Let me know if that works or not.
>>
>> Deron
>>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

--
Deron Kazmaier - support@pagestream.org
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.pagestream.org
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

Hi hi hi Deron...

There''s something to say about having a software problem, asking a
question about it, and then having it "suddenly" working again for
some unknown reason.

Well... sort of working again, anyway.

As you suggested, I ran through the printing trials you suggested last
night and have some results for you.

First off, I should mention that I hadn't attempted to print just a single
simple box/circle, a bitmap image, or some text using a single font...
since I first started using the alpha/beta version, I was always attempting
to print some relatively simple documents that used a combination of the above:
i.e., letters using one or two fonts which also contained a element with a
line+fill; or a checklist I've been developing and updating, using 3-4 fonts,
a dingbat font for the checkbox, and some graphical highlights (lines,
rectangular fills, etc.). Never once could get anything to print;
always had to
resort to "Save as PDF", which had it's own problems for a while (pretty good
now, though.

Now for the printing test... (This was the first time I was
attempting to print/use
the new PageStream v5.0.4.16, by the way.)

I first drew a simple rectangle and an intersecting circle graphic,
and attempted to
print that. No go.

I went back to check my Print Setup and realized that something was amiss:
Printer: Stylus_CX5400
Sent to: Printer
PPD: No PPD selected

I recalled that an Epson PPD used to be listed when using earlier alpha/beta
versions, as well as your post yesterday suggesting use of the Adobe
Laserwriter
PPD. My plan was to reselect the Epson PPD and attempt the printing tests, and
if that didn't work, I would try the suggested Laserwriter PPD. Unfortunately,
I could not reselect a PPD file -- ~10 seconds after pressing the
arrow selector
following the PPD line, PageStream crashed. Same thing occurred each time I
attempted this.

The repeated crashes suggested that my prefs file was likely corrupted in some
manner -- and it also occurred to me that there might be other conflicts
potentially caused by changes in the prefs that were made between the alpha PgS
I first started using and the current beta. So I threw out my
"PageStream5.prefs"
file and started fresh. Lucky me, this apparently fixed some of my
printing issues.
(Woohoo!)

First off, my Print Setup now showed the following:
Printer: Stylus_CX5400
Sent to: Printer
PPD: EPSON CX5400 (1)

However, as before, I was again unable to select a different PPD file
-- even with
a fresh prefs file, PgS crashed ~10 seconds after pressing the PPD
selector button.
This seems to be a problem with PgS v5.0.4.16, since selecting a
different PPD file
worked fine for me with earlier alpha/beta versions (when I was
trying to see if
selecting a different PPD would work for me).

Now that I had a PPD listed again, I again attempted to print the intersecting
rectangle + circle I drew -- it printed quickly and perfectly! Terrific!

Next I loaded up a 1920 x 1080 color (RGB) jpg graphic I had on my desktop,
resizing it down to 20%. Again, it printed out quickly and perfectly. I feel as
if I'm on a roll now.

Time for text... I typed out a quick sentence to use for my test,
after which I
would select a random font and try to print it. My font choices were
as follows:
Adobe Garamond Pro, MovieStar, AndaleMono, ComicSans, CSTimes, Triforce
and ZapfDingbats.

Printing out each sentence using only a single font again worked perfectly for
each fonts, with the exception of ZapfDingbats in which only the
first character
of the sentence printed (the letter "C" if it matters).

Needless to say, by this point Deron, I'm pretty damned ecstatic...
since this is
the first time I've actually had text get sent to the printer and
pass through without
any errors! Seems like trashing the prefs file + the changes made to PageStream
v5.0.4.16 did the trick.

I next attempted something more complex.. a combination of the above
tests. I used:
* A single line of text (using only a single font),
* The intersecting rectangle + circle, but with a change. The rectangle
now has a 50% blue file. The circle a 50% red fill + a 50% opacity
(so I could see the rectangle through it where the two intersect).
Both still had the standard black .5pt line.
* A 5-sided polygon,. standard .5pt line, with a simple "Shape" fill
of Black to White (both 100%)
* Lastly, the same color jpg I used earlier, but shrunk down to 10%.
And they all printed out perfectly together!!!

Next I took the above combination and added a second line of text
using a different
font -- this too printed out correctly.

HOWEVER... for the next test, I added a third line of text, again
with a different
font. and this would NOT print.

I next went back to a blank page and tried to just print out text
using more than
one font. Using the fonts I listed earlier (except for ZapfDingbats),
I could only
print out text if it contained 1 or 2 fonts. Attempting to use any
combination of
3 or more fonts would NOT print.

Nothing I attempted would get 3 or more fonts in a single page to print -- no
combination of fonts seemed to matter, nor did any variation of the
"font unload"
option. (I couldn't really think of anything else to try.)

In my previous posting, I mentioned that when a document would fair to print,
my CX5400 printer app would put the document into a "hold" state, and that
I would occasionally notice an error message that would pop up and quickly
disappear. I was finally able to piece together the entire error
message, as follows:

The process "pstopdffilter" stopped unexpectedly with status 1

This is the same error message I alway receive when PageStream fails to print
for me. Hopefully this will enable you to better track down the cause of the
failure.

Well, Deron, if you have any other suggestions, I'll be happy to try them. But
in the meantime, this is definitely a promising start. Now the trick
is to figure
out how I can get 3+ fonts to print (in addition to ZapfDingbats)... OY!

I do have one addition note relating to the various onscreen palettes
-- I noticed
a new problem with these under v5.0.4.16. I have the Color, Document and Page
Palettes open along the right side of my screen, each Palette opened
to one-third
of the window height. As you are aware, if you drag a Palette window
open larger
than its contents, you'll obviously see a "blank" white space at the bottom.

The first time I reopened all three Color Palettes after trashing my prefs,
everything seemed fine. However, when I closed my doc and created a new one,
I noticed a problem. The <Mixed>, <Custom> and following colors are all moved
downwards as far as they can go -- so the last color (for me, yellow), rests at
the very bottom of the palette. This means that the "blank" white
space that would
normally be located at the bottom of the Palette window instead
appeared at the top!
Worse, each "blank" line at the top looked like a spreadsheet cell,
with each "cell"
outlined in black (two "cells" per line, one for the color swatch,
and one for the
color name). Thankfully, simply resizing the Color Palette fixed the problem
permanently, as it has not reoccurred after that initial time.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Document and Page Palettes, which
had a similar problem. Any items within these palettes appear at the
very bottom
of the palette, with the "blank" white space above. Thankfully
there's no outlining
problems. Resizing the Palette once again fixes the problem, but only until you
close the document. The Palettes revert to this weird state whenever
you open or
create another document.

For example, in my case, when I open a new document, the Document
Palette apoears
as follows (I'm using an "X" as an icon placeholder):

X X X
---------------------

X untitled
X Default Master Page

As for the Page Palette, mine is set up to just over a 4x4 grid
format -- i.e., it shows
4 pages per line, 16 pages totals... plus approx. the top quarter of
pages 17-20.. When
I open a new document, Page 1 appears at the lower left corner of the
open Palette window
(in my case, just a little below where Page 13 would normally appear.
Everything above
that is white space. Again, resising the window slightly fixes the
problem, but only
temporarily until a new doc is opened or created.

An additionally problem I noticed with the Page Palette is occurs
when you have enough
pages in your document to fill up the palette and the scrollbar
appears. (As a test, I
drew a small text box and imported PgS old Lorem Ipsum text file,
which resulted in
21 pages for me.) If i scrolled the Page Palette downwards to see
page 17-21, the page
icons for Pages 1-12 would move upwards normally, but the icons for pages 13-17
would instead "stretch" upwards (just like the elevator in Haunted
Mansion). The Page
Icons for the remaining pages stayed where they were (i.e., in my
case, the top edges of
Pages 17-20 stayed in place at the palette bottom). Resizing the
palette would again fix
the problem... but onlt until you again used the scrollbar. Ack!

If this doesn't make sense, let me know where to send a screen grab
and I'll pop it over to
you.

And that's that... hope this all helps towards identifying the printing issues.

As always, many thanks for your help, and for all the terrific work
you're doing for us
Mac folk.

Best regards!
Jeff

>Hi Jeff,
>
>First, like on Linux, PageStream prints postscript at all times. CUPS is
>the underlying printing system that the Mac (and Linux) uses and it
>renders PostScript. The difference seems to be that Apple uses CUPS, but
>not ghostscript (I don't know that for sure, but as you may recall NeXT
>was postscript bases and I'll bet they have used their own rendering code).
>
>So you have a software bases postscript -RIP, and you are not left out
>in this discussion!
>
>The next question for you, is have your tried printing non-text only
>document? Start with just a simple box, then try a bitmap picture.
>Finally, try a few different fonts one at a time to see if you can get
>any to print. If your problem is that you can't print text, then my
>suggestion still applies to you. This is _not_ a perminate solution,
>just trying to identify the problem.
>
>Deron
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Whoops, quick addendum here:

Seems that none of my indents, extras spaces nor extra line
feeds appear correctly here on the postings (duh! Jeff).

The following relates to my discussion of Page Palette issues
which appeared waaaay down at the bottom of my prior
posting.

This is how it showed up in the previous post:

as follows (I'm using an "X" as an icon placeholder):

* * * * * * * * * * * *
PAGE
* * * * * * * * * * * *
X X X
-----------------

X untitled
X Default Master Page

* * * * * * * * * * * *

For this to have made proper sense, there should
have been six empty lines located between the
dashes ("------") and the "x untitled" text.

sort of like this:

* * * * * * * * * * * *
PAGE
* * * * * * * * * * * *
X X X
-----------------
(empty)
(empty)
(empty)
(empty)
(empty)
(empty)
X untitled
X Default Master Page

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Hope that clears it up a bit.

Jeff

>For example, in my case, when I open a new document, the Document
>Palette apoears
>as follows (I'm using an "X" as an icon placeholder):
>
>X X X
>---------------------
>
>X untitled
>X Default Master Page
>
>As for the Page Palette, mine is set up to just over a 4x4 grid
>format -- i.e., it shows
>4 pages per line, 16 pages totals... plus approx. the top quarter of
>pages 17-20.. When
>I open a new document, Page 1 appears at the lower left corner of the
>open Palette window
>(in my case, just a little below where Page 13 would normally appear.
>Everything above
>that is white space. Again, resising the window slightly fixes the
>problem, but only
>temporarily until a new doc is opened or created.
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Jeff,

This one is fixed for the next release. For some reason scrollbars were
returning negative offsets if the visible area was larger than the
needed area.

Thanks,

Deron

> Whoops, quick addendum here:
>
> Seems that none of my indents, extras spaces nor extra line
> feeds appear correctly here on the postings (duh! Jeff).
>
> The following relates to my discussion of Page Palette issues
> which appeared waaaay down at the bottom of my prior
> posting.
>
>

--
Deron Kazmaier - support@pagestream.org
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.pagestream.org
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

Jeff Krispow wrote:
>
> Nothing I attempted would get 3 or more fonts in a single page to print -- no
> combination of fonts seemed to matter, nor did any variation of the
> "font unload"
> option. (I couldn't really think of anything else to try.)
>
>

Thanks for another piece of the puzzle. I still don't have answers for
all the printing problems...

> If i scrolled the Page Palette downwards to see
> page 17-21, the page
> icons for Pages 1-12 would move upwards normally, but the icons for pages 13-17
> would instead "stretch" upwards (just like the elevator in Haunted
> Mansion). The Page
> Icons for the remaining pages stayed where they were (i.e., in my
> case, the top edges of
> Pages 17-20 stayed in place at the palette bottom). Resizing the
> palette would again fix
> the problem... but onlt until you again used the scrollbar. Ack!
>

Fixed. Thanks!

Deron

--
Deron Kazmaier - support@pagestream.org
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.pagestream.org
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

Hello there,

I have been trying out PGS 5.0.4.17 Mac beta and have the following
initial comments:

BORDERS TOOL Any attempt to use this tool causes an immediate crash.
As the tool is dragged out across the page nothing appears (not even
a dotted box) and when the mouse button id released PGS crashes
instantly. Borders on documents produced in PGS 4 are shown on the
page OK and will print OK but any attempt to edit them (e.g. change
the size by dragging with the mouse) also causes an instant crash.

MOUSE CURSOR The appearance of this is still erratic. The most
noticeable case is when importing a graphic. The mouse cursor appears
as a black square rather than a corner mark. After placing the
graphic this black square persists whatever tool is in use. The only
way I have found to get rid of it is to use 'Redraw Screen'. The
pointer and text cursors are also reluctant to change from one to the
other and back again so it is easy to get confused about which tool
one is actually using.

FIND/CHANGE and similar boxes. After pressing 'Apple/F' the box
appears but the cursor is not placed in the first line (Or any other
line), Consequently after highlighting text and pressing' Apple/F' I
find that I have replaced the whole text block with the word I am
trying to enter in 'Find/Change'. It was not so in PGS 4 for Mac OS
9. The word you typed was instantly placed in the 'Find/Change' box.

CHANGING PAGE SIZE ON SCREEN I find that I am getting 2s and 3s
dotted around my documents because in this version 1, 2, 3 & 4 change
the page size only if the pointer tool is selected. In the previous
version 'Apple 1', 'Apple 2', 'Apple 3' and 'Apple 4' changed the
page size whatever tool is selected. I think that trhis was much better.

I have managed to produce a document using PGS 5.0.4.15 but when I
had nearly finished the file became unreadable after a crash. I
thought that I had set up to produce backups from time to time but I
obviously did not do it right because no backups were saved. However,
I had printed each page as it was completed so I only lost a couple
of pages that weren't finished. This is only the second time I have
lost a document using PageStream and the first time was several years
ago.

To sum up; it looks as if PGS is going to be useable on Mac OS X but
there appears to be some way to go yet before it is as reliable as
previous versions.

With many thanks,

Cheerio,

Terence Casey

G4 PPC Mac running OS X 10.4.11

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hello,

> I have been trying out PGS 5.0.4.17 Mac beta and have the following
> initial comments:
>

Good to here!

> BORDERS TOOL
>

Found it right away. It had not been recompiled for some changes. Fixed
in next release.

> MOUSE CURSOR The appearance of this is still erratic.

It should be better now, but I saw something last night that I have not
been able to reproduce. The exact steps to reproduce will be important
in the next release so I can stamp out the last of these. The problem
all steps from poor Apple documentation. Seems that focus can change
without events being sent...

> FIND/CHANGE and similar boxes.
>

Fixed for next release. This was related to focus changing without
notification.

> CHANGING PAGE SIZE ON SCREEN I find that I am getting 2s and 3s
> dotted around my documents because in this version 1, 2, 3 & 4 change
> the page size only if the pointer tool is selected. In the previous
> version 'Apple 1', 'Apple 2', 'Apple 3' and 'Apple 4' changed the
> page size whatever tool is selected. I think that trhis was much better.
>

If you can look it up and tell me what the commands were in the past
version (I don't have the ability to run the classic mac version with
this computer) I'll do what I can. I don't see a conflict with any
command, so I'm not sure why they are not still there.

> I have managed to produce a document using PGS 5.0.4.15 but when I
> had nearly finished the file became unreadable after a crash.

When you get a crash, please choose "Report" and then send me the data
that it provides and any thing you can tell me about what you were doing
so I can reproduce the problem.

> To sum up; it looks as if PGS is going to be useable on Mac OS X but
> there appears to be some way to go yet before it is as reliable as
> previous versions.
>

With good feedback, it should not take long to iron out the problems.
The fact that you got this far is a good thing! Just take good notes
when you have a problem and I'll do my best to fix it in the next
release. Save early, save often, and keep backups!

> With many thanks,
>
> Cheerio,
>
> Terence Casey
>
> G4 PPC Mac running OS X 10.4.11
>
>

Thanks,

Deron

--
Deron Kazmaier - support@pagestream.org
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.pagestream.org
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows