QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS...
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Everything you wanted to know about GEM Spooler, but didn't dare to ask...
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Question:  GEM Spooler doesn't seem to work if I print with Calamus or
           Timeworks Publisher (or other programs). What's happening ?

Answer:    These programs - and some other too - print directly to the output
           port (serial or parallel), bypassing the normal TOS routines. No
           spooler can help this ! These programs do this to achieve higher
           printing speed. But usually, printing through TOS with GEM Spooler
           is even faster than printing directly to the output port !
           Therefore, check if your software offers the choice between direct
           or standard printing (refer to the software's manual). If so, use
           standard printing. If not, you'll have to settle with the software's
           choice.

           Note: Some Calamus printer drivers do print through TOS routines:
           sometimes serial, sometimes parallel. If your printer needs that
           driver, you're lucky. Try it out !


Question:  If GEM Spooler is activated, my foreground tasks slow down...
           What is wrong ?

Answer:    The printer timing is not correctly set and slows down GEM...
           If your printer is connected to the parallel port, check if the
           busy interrupt is activated (Timing dialog). If you really want to
           print in block mode or if your printer is connected to the serial
           port, lower the block size and/or raise the event timer value.
           Experiment !


Question:  When I print with Adimens, the spooler seems to receive the
           data but he never creates a print job !

           Well, Adimens (and certainly some other programs too) doesn't
           handle the printer correctly. When starting up, Adimens opens
           a printer handle (logical printer) for its output and keeps it
           opened until you leave the program. This is not correct ! The
           normal procedure is to open a printer handle just before
           printing, to send the data over this handle and then to close
           the printer handle again.
           This first problem can be solved by enabling the GEM Spooler
           option: Force FCLOSE. This will make GEM Spooler close down
           output redirection for Adimens on a timeout (twice the normal
           timeout for GEMDOS and BIOS printing) even when printer handles
           stay open.
           Another problem with Adimens (again, there are other programs
           that suffer from the same disease) is that the program always
           opens two printer handles: one to print the printer initializa-
           tion codes with and one to print the actual data with.
           And it gets even worse: for some dark reason, Adimens does not
           even use these printer handles, it duplicates them and uses the
           duplicates to work with. All this has the annoying effect to
           GEM Spooler are four additional logical printers opened.
           But monitoring a logical printer for output consumes time and
           memory: GEM Spooler creates a Multiple Printjob Tracking slot
           (a kind of control structure) to control each possible print
           path. By default there are 4 MPT-slots: one to monitor GEMDOS
           printing, one to monitor BIOS printing and 2 more to monitor
           applications that print over printer handles. This is largely
           enough for normal usage. But Adimens already consumes up about
           4 printer handles, thus exceeding the monitored application
           print paths by 2 ! The result is that the output is not
           redirected, it just disappears in the great nirwana...
           The solution is to increase the number of MPT slots to 8 in the
           option menu. Please note also that each MPT needs its part of
           the write buffer (the buffer that accepts redirected data) so
           you might want ot increase the write buffer to maintain the
           same spooling speed as with 4 MPT slots.


Question:  When I print with some programs, printer output is split up in
           several print jobs although I only started one printout with
           my program.

Answer:    The program you print with does some thinking during printing.
           Its thinking pauses are so long that GEM Spooler concludes
           printing must be finished and creates a job. The result is that
           one print task can be sliced up in several smaller print jobs.
           The solution is easy: raise the value for the Timeout in the
           Setup dialog to give your application more time to think before
           GEM Spooler closes the job (e.g. 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds).

Question:  GEM Spooler crashes when I print with KSpread or Calligrapher.
           GEM Spooler crashes if the 'Prompt for jobsettings' is activated
           under MultiTOS.
           GEM Spooler crashes if I install a virtual screen with
           Screenblaster.

Answer:    You use a version of GEM Spooler older than version 3.0h.
           Contact us for un upgrade.


Question:  I have installed VRAM on my TT or Falcon and when I boot now,
           the system hangs when loading GEM Spooler. There is a lot of
           harddisk activity and only after some time, the desktop appears.

Answer:    The GEM Spooler accessory has its fastload flag turned off,
           because accessories with fastload flag can cause trouble on
           most TOS versions. This causes VRAM to initialize all virtual
           memory with null values. This can take some time (depending on
           the size of the harddisk partition that is dedicated to memory
           swapping) and is visible in the harddisk activity. The solution
           is quite simple: turn on the fastload flag of GSPOOL.ACC.
           This can be done with a utility like PRGFLAGS or MAKECOMP
           (activate) that comes with VRAM.

Question:  Sometimes the GEM dialogs do not appear in the center of the
           screen. That is annoying. Can I change this ?

Answer:    Try activating the 'Center dialogs' option. If this doesn't
           help, are you using ScreenBlaster ? Sometimes, ScreenBlaster
           sets a virtual screen size in the Cookie jar (VSCR cookie)
           that's just not there. As GEM Spooler follows VSCR information
           to always position itself in the visible part of the screen,
           it is misled by ScreenBlaster's wrong settings. Try using an
           other resolution with ScreenBlaster or try to force the correct
           settings by changing the virtual screen resolution and than
           minimizing it again. This sometimes works.
           


Steven Van Rossen, April 1994
