Star Micronics 8 Series manual Hints Managing memory

Hints: Managing memory

.

.

Piintingfancystuffcanbe quitecumbersomefor yourprinter.You trade off fancinessagainstspeed:if youoptfor fewerflourishes,yougiveyour printer breathing room in memory. And that rewards you with faster output.Any of the followingwill slowdown yourlaser printer:

-text over 20 points,

-lots of linesor patterns,

-graphics,

-macros,

-justifiedtext.

Youmaychooseto addanoptionalRAMboardto yourStarLaserPnnler 8 if you need to downloadmany fonts.

. Altcmatively,considereither a softwareor hardware print spooler if printingholdsup yourcomputermorcthanyou’dlike.Aspoolerprovides

aseparate temporary mcmory space that holds the documents10 bc pnntcd, and is particularlyhandyin a multi-usersystem.

. Some page makeup programs automaticallydownload each font as needed,then flushthat font from printermemoryto make room for the next font. This approachcan make good sense if you’re sharing your printer with other peoplein a computernetwork.It keeps the pnntcr’s RAM from becomingoverloaded.However,the downloadingtime can sigriificantlyslow down yourprinter’sthroughput.

●Moretypically,youwilldownloada fontinthemorning(perhapswiththe MS-DOSCOPYcommand)beforeyou print your first document,and that font will then stay in the printer’s memory. If you use a single downloadedfont (or macro) throughoutthe day, you will find it most efficientto keepit in the laserprinter’smemory.You definitelyshould downloadfontsthiswayif youuse a printspooler.If you’rein a nc[work, however,make sure you don’tdownloadduplicatefonts.

✎Howmanydownloadablefontscanyouhaveinonedocument?That’snot so easy to answer.Mostof yourlaser printer’smemoryis not available for storingfonts,becauseit has to storeeach pagebeforeprintingit, as WC1las any macrosor overlaysyou are using.

49