How to make printer print faster?

[Mark Terribile]

Marco,

I haven't much time at the moment, so this will not be a clean reply.

...
> I did the test:
> - When ps is busy processing the document, a lot of angle brackets are
> visible in the middle of the graph (under user). But only for a second or
> two.
> - When the data is sent to the printer, a split second one plus sign is
> visible under sys.
> 
> After that everything returns to "normal" as if nothing is busy and the
> data is being sent to the printer and the printer starts printing.

You are not bound up on either CPU or interrupt behavior.

> At first I thought the bottleneck is the speed of my network and the speed
> the data is sent tot the printer. But it has to be something else because
> when I attach a laptop to my network (with Win2000) it's printing 10 ppm.
> 
> I got the impression that the printer is processing the data coming from
> Windows a lot faster than when the data is coming from FreeBSD.

I'm wondering if the problem is that everything going through APSFILTER is
sent as Postscript or raster.  If this is on a 4.x (did you say 4.9?) then
you are limited to the 1.1 Meg/sec of USB1 (I'm assuming that it's a USB
printer).  USB2 is 450 times faster, and may remove a bottleneck.  On the
other hand, the bottleneck may be the speed at which the printer can process
either Postscript or its raster data.  And that may depend on some resolution
settings.

I can't think of how to measure these things offhand, but that's where I
would start.

    Mark Terribile


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