> wireless connectivity. The surprising thing about it is that it's really, 
> really damned FAST. I've never seen an inkjet so fast!

Yeh they're pretty fast now, especially for black&white text mine really 
pumps out the pages at an impressive rate.  Printing photos on maximum 
quality is another matter though.

>> MS Word offers it too AFAIK.
>
> I don't think it allows you to select odd/even pages or print them in 
> reverse order. (I could be wrong, of course.) It allows you to select 
> ranges, but I don't think it does more than that.

Hmmm, I just checked, my MS WOrd 2003 gives you the option for even/odd 
pages, but nothing to reverse them.  My inkjet printer driver offers a 
"print from last page" option though.

Post a reply to this message

>> and wireless connectivity. The surprising thing about it is that it's 
>> really, really damned FAST. I've never seen an inkjet so fast!
> 
> Yeh they're pretty fast now, especially for black&white text mine really 
> pumps out the pages at an impressive rate.  Printing photos on maximum 
> quality is another matter though.

Even pictures seem to print pretty fast on this thing. But then again, 
that's not at photo-quality...

(My mum's inkjet takes about 20 minutes per sheet if you want 
photo-quality on gloss paper.)

>>> MS Word offers it too AFAIK.
>>
>> I don't think it allows you to select odd/even pages or print them in 
>> reverse order. (I could be wrong, of course.) It allows you to select 
>> ranges, but I don't think it does more than that.
> 
> Hmmm, I just checked, my MS WOrd 2003 gives you the option for even/odd 
> pages, but nothing to reverse them.

OK, well it does slightly more than I thought then. But still not enough 
for manual duplex. (Unless you fancy sorting the pages by hand...)

> My inkjet printer driver offers a "print from last page" option though.

Yeah, some print drivers give you basically nothing, while others let 
you print N pages per sheet, do manual duplexing, collate pages, and 
make a cup of tea...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible schrieb:

>> When I first discovered POV-Ray, I printed out the entire help file. I 
>> don't think it was 2000 pages, but it was a big stack nevertheless :S
> 
> Duplex?

I'd rather have guessed sprocket-feed...

(*Nnjeeeeeeegh! Nnjeeeeeegh! Nnjeeeeegh!*)

Those were the times when you /would/ print out documentation, because 
otherwise you'd have to close your work, fire up the text viewer, try to 
find the diskette with the documentation file, and ultimately wonder 
what you forgot to remember what it was that you wanted to... darn!

Post a reply to this message

Invisible schrieb:

> Heh. *My* laser printer at home doesn't even have a duplexer. If you 
> want to do this, you have to ask Acrobat to print the odd-numbered pages 
> in reverse order, feed the stack of pages thus generated back into the 
> beast, and tell Acrobat to print even-numbered pages in forwards order.
> 
> Or is it the other way around? I can never remember...

... and make sure that you print an even number of pages!

 > Notice that *only* Acrobat actually offers the ability to do these
 > things, as far as I can tell. If you want to print from some other
 > program... good luck!

Heh, *my* laser printer doesn't have any duplex printing hardware 
either, but the driver is smart enough to do the even/odd 
forward/reverse trick by itself, and give clear instructions how to 
insert the printed stack back in the paper tray :-)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible schrieb:

> (My mum's inkjet takes about 20 minutes per sheet if you want 
> photo-quality on gloss paper.)

Let me guess: That's the printer you gave to her at about the same time 
when you bought a new one because your older one was too slow :-P

Post a reply to this message

Invisible schrieb:

> For viewing stuff on-screen, PDF isn't such a hot choice. HTML has the 
> advantage that the text can be reflowed to any screen resolution and 
> window size. It's specifically designed for on-screen display.

*Designed* for on-screen display? Well, I'd rather say it is a case of 
evolution rather than intelligent design :-P

Anyway, I see the reformatting as a disadvantage. PDF does give more 
control over how the information is presented, which can help the help 
author to make the text formatting more consistent as well as avoid some 
layout mishaps, which in turn allows the reader to grasp the information 
more easily.

I'd say HTML is a great tool for a bunch of semi-related and inherently 
unordered but heavily interlinked pages (I'd say Wikipedia is /the/ 
killer application for HTML, and actually that's /exactly/ what HTML was 
originally invented for), but a poor tool for a coherent and inherently 
ordered set of pages like a software documentation.

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> Heh, *my* laser printer doesn't have any duplex printing hardware 
> either, but the driver is smart enough to do the even/odd 
> forward/reverse trick by itself, and give clear instructions how to 
> insert the printed stack back in the paper tray :-)

Yes, some print drivers have a crapload of helpful options like that, 
and others have absolutely nothing. It varies...

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> Anyway, I see the reformatting as a disadvantage. PDF does give more 
> control over how the information is presented, which can help the help 
> author to make the text formatting more consistent as well as avoid some 
> layout mishaps, which in turn allows the reader to grasp the information 
> more easily.

I disagree.

> I'd say HTML is a poor tool for a coherent and inherently 
> ordered set of pages like a software documentation.

Go spent three hours trying to figure out the 8-page railroad syntax 
diagrams in the Oracle PDF manual, then come back to me. Now of course, 
if this was HTML, it wouldn't be split across multiple pages. And you 
could just directly to the part you're interested in instead of wading 
through the irrelevant parts of this "coherent and inherently ordered 
set of pages". :-P

Post a reply to this message

On 11/6/2009 9:38 AM, clipka wrote:
> I'd say HTML is a great tool for a bunch of semi-related and inherently
> unordered but heavily interlinked pages (I'd say Wikipedia is /the/
> killer application for HTML, and actually that's /exactly/ what HTML was
> originally invented for), but a poor tool for a coherent and inherently
> ordered set of pages like a software documentation.

Even better than plain HTML is the HTML Help format used by POV. Because 
it comes with a table of contents, index and search feature (though I 
rarely use the last one).

Mike

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> I don't think it allows you to select odd/even pages or print them in 
> reverse order. (I could be wrong, of course.) 

You didn't actually look, did you? :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message