Volume 21–2.pdf

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Very Soon on the I nternational TypeFounders CD-ROM
and ITC Design Palette!
Circle 4 on Reader Service Card
The
Proof
Is in the Printer
...And the bike messenger's waiting.
How a (fictitious) design studio overcame
a series oflaser printer problems that could
strike anyone, anytime.
by David Pogue
It was late on a Friday afternoon in one of New
York City's most successful fictitious design stu-
dios. Tia Sperling had an easy assignment: to print
out a laser proof of the brochure mockup she
had designed on her Macintosh. After printing the
two-page galley, she planned to get it bike-mes-
sengered to the client, then grab a cab home and
relax for the weekend.
She called Blazing Pedals, the bike-messenger
company. "The envelope will be ready in half an
hour," she told them, "and it has to be uptown by
six, because my client is six-foot-five and short-
tempered, and he needs this printout under his
arm when his flight leaves for Tokyo at eight."
They said okay. She sat at her computer, chose
the Print command from the menu, leaned back,
and took a sip of iced coffee. Then the Macintosh
beeped. She looked at it, puzzled. This is what it
told her:
OK
Can't open printer. Use the
Chooser command on the ri menu
to select another printer.
"I don't want to open it:' she muttered. "I just
want to print with it."
She opened the Chooser desk accessory, as
it was suggesting; sure enough, the window, nor-
mally crowded with printer icons, was empty.
"Strange;' she said. "They were there yesterday. I
remember seeing them, just before Jake came by
to install that system-software update—"
She snapped her fingers. "Jaaake!"
Jake, 21 and ponytailed, came loping in from
the other side of the office. He apologized, in
his noncommunicative way, and grabbed the
System disks that come with every Macintosh.
He used the Installer disk to reinstall the printer
drivers; when the computer was restarted, the
printer icons were all back where they were sup-
posed to be—in the Extensions folder, inside the
System folder. And, therefore, in the Chooser
window "Thanks loads;' said Tia, as she selected
36
the laser printer icon once more.
Now there were two problems. First problem:
even when the laser printer icon was selected, the
name of her printer, LaserWriter IV, didn't show
up in the Chooser window. And she knew what
that meant: no printer name, no communication
between computer and printer—and no printout.
Second problem: the Blazing Pedals guy had
just showed up, grubby from the city filth and
looking like a large insect in his protective gear.
"Just a sec;' Tia called out to him.
The computer wasn't seeing the printer. What
could be wrong? She inspected the cables. It all
seemed fine: the network connector was attached
to her Mac; telephone wire stretched along the
desk; and the other connector was attached to the
printer. The printer was turned on—so why was
the Mac reporting that the printer wasn't there?
Since the computer was working, and the
printer usually worked fine, Tia figured that either
the connectors or the cable was on the fritz. But
there was no time to investigate; she reasoned that
she could rule out three possible flaky compo-
nents in one swoop just by substituting somebody
else's connector-and-cable ensemble. "Jaaaake!"
Within three minutes, Jake's wiring had re-
placed Tia's, and the printer was at last on speak-
ing terms with the computer. (Only days later
would Tia discover that her original cable had
indeed developed a crimp.)
UK
OK, But Cannot Be Printed
As Tia tried the Print command, she tried to
smile at the impatient bike messenger, who was
shifting restlessly from foot to foot. "Almost
there; she cooed.
But she wasn't. Now the computer told her this:
R PostScript error has occurred.
The document is OK, but cannot be
printed.
"That's whatyou think;' she told the computer.
"If I can't print it, it's not OK
Even Jake was nonplussed. "Huh; he said.
Zephyr, Tia's wonderful but New Age partner,
came over to check out the ruckus. Zephyr sized
up the situation immediately. "Your work is too
complex;' she said.
Tia was hurt. "But this is exactly the effect the
client wanted! He kept saying, 'I want this to be
the mother of all brochures!"
"No, no, not the design;' replied Zephyr, "the
document." PostScript, she reminded Tia, is the
behind-the-scenes code language spoken by com-
puters to laser printers. A PostScript error can
mean only one of two things: either the fonts or
the graphics are too complex for the printer to
handle. In Tia's PageMaker document, one or the
other was having a bad hair day.
Tia glanced nervously at the bike messenger,
Continued on page 40