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Printing Faster

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    Printing Faster

    My company have 15 application forms for different products.
    I recently spent an enormous amount of time redesigning these forms from there current 3 A4 pages (2 letters in alpha) to 4 A4 pages (again 2 letters in alpha)
    What I hadn't tried was how fast the new forms would print.
    It has turned out that each letter takes apx 30 to 60 seconds to print giving a total sometimes as long as 2 minutes for the full 4 pages to print which for our sales people is just too slow.
    The new forms have 4 small bitmaps, a lot of grey trellis boxes & a lot of conditional objects. I am trying a bit of trial and error but has anyone come across a similar problem and have any suggestions to speed things up.
    The printers are very fast as are the workstations PIII 1.0 Ghz.
    TIA
    Terry

    #2
    RE: Printing Faster

    Terry,

    I don't know a lot about these matters but I found out by accident that dotted lines can take a long time. This sounds crazy but if you have a line object formatted as dotted, change it to dashes and prepare to be amazed at the increase in print speed.

    When I mentioned this to the PCL expert where I work he explained that a dot was not a native object in PCL. In consequence each one had to be individually generated and filled in, obviously a much more demanding task.

    Prove it to yourself by creating a simple layout with one or two lines on it. Print it. Then change the formatting to dotted and watch your print process time out. Well perhaps not. It timed out on my HP 6L at home but it printed fine on the heavy duty Xerox on our network. Of course that beast has 30 megs of memory and its own processor.

    Bill
    Bill Hanigsberg

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Printing Faster

      I am just posting again here to get this to the top of the list as these forms are just printing too slow.
      Any help, Please
      I have already reduced bitmaps, trellis boxes & conditional fields but they are still printing too slow. Does attaching forms to sets not tables have any effect, which table of a set should a letter be attached to via properties?
      Thanks
      Terry

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Printing Faster

        Somehow I missed this thread when searching for a problem with report speed. I'm having a somewhat similar problem. You might want to check out my post titled something like Report Speed vs. Source. Some of my findings may help and, hopefully, someone else will be able to add to it.

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Printing Faster

          The question seems to be is it taking a long time to print or is it taking a long time to query the records to print. A recent message thread described how it was very slow to print large memo fields in a rich text object. No real answer here except keep the memos outside the rich text object if speed is important. Cal's comments describe the inability to achieve query optimization when not launching the report from a form based on the same table or set. It also might be interesting to see if using a report rather than a letter showed better results. I have apps that send out lots of letters, all of which are reports.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Printing Faster

            is it taking a long tim to start printing?
            or
            is it taking a long time to print once the printer starts? or
            is it taking a long time for both

            I have reconfigured printers like crazy and realized great benefits in speed ( lowering quality of print )
            and in other cases
            I have reworked the program to help with speed ( no graphics like lines and so forth )
            and
            In some cases the lan was at fault
            but
            Windows can be a factor and I haven't found a way around that

            I know these are general, but not knowing the first 3 answers leaves only room for general statements

            Dave
            Dave Mason
            [email protected]
            Skype is dave.mason46

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Printing Faster

              The printers are lightning fast, it is actually the time on screen that the printing (rendeing etc) is taking, the box comes up quick but it all appears to hang.
              Printing is the current record, on a form displayed in record order printing so there is no query delay.
              It happens on my standalone test bed & on the lan but is much worse on the lan as most things are compared to standalone setups.
              I will look for the other thread mentioned.
              Thanks
              Terry

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Printing Faster

                FWIW. I had a report that was taking an excessive time to print. I created a dummy table and extracted the records I wanted from the larger table(s) to the dummy using a query and then printed from the dummy table. Assembling the report and printing are quite fast with this method. Could you use a similar approach?

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Printing Faster

                  Terry, this is one of my number one complaints and there is
                  no easy solution. It's frustrating for client's when there
                  old Point of sale in Alpha 4 (Dos) print's faster than the
                  newer Alpha 5. You're going to have to try everything
                  suggested here and maybe then some just to get a compromise.

                  Despite the graphics, you might try installing a generic
                  driver or an older/smaller driver that might run
                  faster. Then select the printer from within the report
                  properties area.

                  I'm hoping Alpha addresses this issue with some kind of
                  generic driver of their own that may not have all of the
                  features but meets the need for speed demands in sales.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Printing Faster

                    Terry,

                    I truly sympathize your problem.

                    From experience with VB and Crystal Reports ( and it seems Alpha5 ), I have found it better if I can manage to get the print to go text only. Most all printing done in windows takes your text and sends it to the printer as a graphic. If your printer can be reconfigured for text and you can print to a text only printer - well maybe. It has worked for me sometimes. I am hung with dot matrix printers only and I can recongigure most of them to work with all text, but not always can I get the program to send all text through windows. Text wil be much faster!

                    Dave
                    Dave Mason
                    [email protected]
                    Skype is dave.mason46

                    Comment

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