DonationCoder.com Software > N.A.N.Y. 2010
NANY 2010 Release: Page Countster
Stoic Joker:
I was printing a pdf over the weekend and the length of time it took to spool it was amazing. (on adobe reader 9). it seems like it was only a 1 meg file anyway. I do know that a job with images on it takes longer to spool than a plain text document does. If I am not mistaken then pdf's are an "image", which is one of the reasons they look so nice.-techidave (January 11, 2010, 06:24 AM)
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That depends on how they were created. If they were scanned in then yes each page of a document is a picture of that page, embedded in another document (that's why OCR software sells so well). Natively created/Distilled/Compiled PDFs are actually object based (that's where the fun starts), and have to be dealt with on the fly during pagination (I swear that's really a word...).
Each paragraph and sometimes line, is a separate object containing vector based fonts (which is why they scale so well). This adds up to a ton of math that has to be done before the document (which is then huge) hits the spooler. Try this for "fun" ... Open the spooler so you can see the document go through. Send a small 1 or 2 page PDF to that printer and watch how big it gets before it actually gets sent to the printer. I've see 500KB documents hit 400MB many times ... Usually this happens just seconds before all parties involved simultaneously run out of memory (for no intelligent reason). The fix for this with older versions (6-8 ) of Acrobat was to select the "Print as Image" option in Acrobats custom select printer options dialog (could be set globally also, but I forget where).
The other more general "fix" for ill behaving PDF prints was to use PCL5 and avoid PCL6 like a plague. I just ran into this today, PCL6 was Happily printing Blank Pages, and the PCL5 (as usual) driver printed the job correctly (replete with page contents). PCL6 wastes far too much time tossing statistical information about the print job at the printer, and subsequently chronically borks the actual print job as a direct result (i.e. Long files names + Mac + PCL6 = lockups)
i know that more memory will help with printing bigger jobs. for a moment there, I was thinking that more memory in a printer would be like more memory in a computer. :-[
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Nothing wrong with that, it's a common logical assumption...(mine too, back when)...But, I've just been dealing with printers-N-such on a daily basis for the past 6 years so I've had plenty of time to notice-a-trend...
3of0:
Awesome piece of software! I love it! :D Been looking for something like this for a while.
Something I'd like to see, which might end up being a different project, is to have something sit in a system tray, or running in the background as a service, monitoring a list of printers toner and send an alert, e-mail or notification, when the toner is out or very low. Possibly paper too. *shrug*
Looking for a way to be preemptive on some of the things around the office. :)
techidave:
For some of the printers you can setup an email alert to notify when toner gets low or their is a paper jam or whatever. You might check your printer options.
Maybe I should have said that most of the recent printers (lasers)that are networkable have this setup available. I have a hodgepodge of different brands in my network. HP, Samsung, Xerox, Lexmark. Some of them will even email you when the paper tray is empty.
Stoic Joker:
Awesome piece of software! I love it! :D Been looking for something like this for a while.
Something I'd like to see, which might end up being a different project, is to have something sit in a system tray, or running in the background as a service, monitoring a list of printers toner and send an alert, e-mail or notification, when the toner is out or very low. Possibly paper too. *shrug*
Looking for a way to be preemptive on some of the things around the office. :)
-3of0 (March 03, 2010, 04:01 PM)
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Thank You, I'm glad you're enjoying Page Countster.
There is an older (tray utility) project called PrinStats mentioned on the bottom of page one of this thread that is for monitoring a single printer's page count, toner level, and display messages (which would give paper out etc.). But it's only for one printer at a time. Real time monitoring/reporting of network printers is one of the features that is planned for the complete suite that (will be a comercial product) Page Countster is part of.
Beyond that Techidave is indeed correct in that many of the newer printers feature automatic emailing of certain events.
3of0:
Very cool. I haven't noticed that tool on some of the printers here, but I might not have dug deep enough either. Thanks! :)
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