This is the Troubleshooting file provided with ProStream Plus PSfonts package. It is uploaded to GEnie as a useful aid to people perplexed with any postscript fonts, including those posted on GEnie. © Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993 by Lion Kuntz, San Francisco, CA. USA. All Rights Reserved. TROUBLESHOOTING ALLIED STUDIOS is proud of its record of quality. Over 5,000 product disks sold in 1991 with only two reported disk failures. Every single disk is VERIFIED before packaging. This takes twice as long for disk duplication, adding to overhead costs, but as you see, you don't pay any extra for the highest quality possible. We don't believe there is any company at any price range with higher quality in manufacturing standards! Each PROSTREAM postscript type-1 typefaces has been tested and printed. Each Professional Page version was printed to a Postscript printer, since that is the only way they can be used. Each PageStream version was printed in both ways: to a postscript printer and to a non-postscript preferences printer. There are some known irregularities. They are few. The software still works despite the irregularities, and there doesn't seem to be anything this publisher can do to eliminate these irregularities. With PageStream some of the most ornamental letters, the highly decorated initials, seem to be too complex for PageStream to properly render on the screen. Printouts to non-postscript printers produce pages with the same glitches shown by PageStream on the screen. When those same pages are sent to a true postscript printer they print just as they are supposed to without the glitches seen on screen. Three or four typefaces will not be usable by non-postscript users until some future fix from Soft-Logic. PageStream, Professional Page, and AmigaDOS are others property. There is nothing this publisher can do about them. The irregularities were so minor that it seemed worth inclusion of the typefaces. There are 800 pieces of software in this package. It is certainly possible for a mistake to have crept in. Every postscript typeface printed correctly to a postscript printer by each program. If any new answers come up you get free upgrade. Let's move on. Postscript is a computer language. Postscript typefaces are program subroutines. There's no end to the combinations of things people might do with their page creation software, and no end to the things which can go wrong with computer programs in actual use. It is possible to run your postscript printer out of memory in four different ways: (1) page too complex; (2) stack overflow; (3) too many typefaces used; (4) too many sizes of typefaces used. Postscript printers need space for the incoming program before processing, storage for typefaces waiting to be used, cache space for characters presently in use; working memory for interpretation computations from programming already received, and raster output storage. If you exceed any limit you may get a partial page, a wrong looking page, or more likely no page at all. If you need a lot of typefaces on one page, with many characters per typeface used, in many sizes, you may need to print the page more than once. First pass print half or a third, next pass more, etc. I have sample typeface pages requiring four printing passes (or 6 more megabytes of memory than my printer has). PageStream in non-postscript mode doesn't have this difficulty. PageStream in Postscript mode has a means to flush out each typeface after use and load an infinite number of typefaces. Read your manual for this. Professional Page has no current means to unload fonts. Both programs, by default, load all the fonts used in an entire document before any of the pages are loaded. That means that a twenty page document with a different typeface on each page will be like sending one page with twenty typefaces on it. Again, probably no page will ever be printed due to out-of-memory error. Some of the typefaces were produced by scanning samples from printed type resource books, and autotracing the resultant bitmap letters. You can tell an autotrace by the excessive number of control points describing the characters. These highly ornamental letters not only give PageStream a problem surpassing its ability to interpret them, but probably exceeds the 1,500 turnpoints per character postscript level one limit too. (See GLOSSARY_TEXT file disk #1.) The most decorative initials typefaces may not be printable on high resolution imagesetters. No tests were made to imagesetters. AmigaDOS screen fonts can be tested easily in DPaint, Notepad, or any convenient program. It is easy to eliminate them as any part of a problem. If a font shows up in DPaint but not in Professional Page, it means the metric file is missing or damaged. Check installation and reinstall if necessary. PageStream shows you the typeface on the screen long before it sends it to printer, so you know the typeface file is installed correctly and is working properly if you can see it. Any problems with PageStream would then be caused by cable problems, or printer memory or configuration problems, or rarely, by Amiga port problems. Echo from the CLI the word "showpage" directed to the port you are connected to. If the port is ok, the cable is ok, the printer is configured ok, then a page will come out of the postscript printer. Proper syntax for this command is: PROMPT > Echo >PAR: "showpage" ; press return If the hardware is all ok, scrutinize the software. If no page, check all switches on printer, set baud if serial printer, check cable connections, replace cable, try printer on friends computer, try computer on friends printer. Switch from parallel to serial if option exists. Try printer self-test. The hardware is the easier to troubleshoot. Troubleshooting software problem. Reread page composition software manual. Reread this products installation instructions. Reinstall software. Reinstall OS devices (devs:parallel.device, etc.). Try software on friends computer. Check your assigns, defaults, filepath spellings, etc. Try the easiest to check things first, and eliminate as many possibilities as you can. Check the most likely before the least likely. For example, if you just printed three pages and got nothing for the fourth page, it is not likely that you have a hardware problem. It is more likely you used up the memory of your printer. Reset the printer and try again, or try again with fewer fonts on the page. If problems persist, call Gold Disk, Soft-Logik, your printer service center, Adobe Systems, Amiga, and then after all them you can call for technical help to ALLIED STUDIOS. No help if you have not registered your product!