The hardware and software of your PLP have been thoroughly tested during their development. These release notes provide you with a summary of the results of our testing effort, up-to-date information on software compatibility, and some general information on ways to improve your printing productivity.
Before installing the software, you must first read the installation instructions provided in the PLP User’s Manual Addendum.
If you do not have the PLP User’s Manual or if you are missing any of the disks or other manuals, please contact your dealer or call GCC Technologies™ Customer Support at (800) 422-7777 to obtain these documents.
• 7.0 Compatibility
PLP 3.0 is fully compatible with system 7.0, allowing you to use 32-bit addressing and Virtual Memory (VM) while printing, assuming your application is itself “32-bit clean” and compatible with VM.
VM makes it appear as though your machine has more memory available than the actual amount of physical memory (RAM) installed, so you may be able to print documents which were too large or complex to print when only the RAM on your machine was available.
Because accessing a hard disk is slower than accessing RAM, use of VM typically increases the time required to print a document with the PLP. If several applications are running simultaneously, available RAM will be reduced and the PLP software may have to access the disk more frequently, thus reducing printing speed. However, it is possible that, if enough of the data not required by PLP is moved out to the disk, more RAM will be available to the PLP software than would have been the case without VM. In this case, the time required to print may actually decrease.
If you find that VM causes unacceptable increases in printing time and you are running multiple applications simultaneously, try closing the other applications before printing. If this does not help, you may want to turn VM off.
• TrueType Compatibility
PLP 3.0 will print using TrueType fonts (including rotated and flipped text) if your screen font is a TrueType font and there is no corresponding GCC font in your Font File Folder.
• 3rd Party Font Substitution
If you have replaced GCC fonts with either ATM® or TrueType® you can now use the font substitution features of the PLP software. Font Substitution will now take place if outline fonts (ATM or TrueType) are installed for Helvetica, Times, or Courier. Please note, however, that there may be line-layout problems when fonts are substituted since the character widths are vastly different between New York and Times, Geneva and Helvetica, and Monaco and Courier. If you have installed TrueType Geneva, Monaco and New York, you can avoid these problems by printing without Font Substitution.
• Font Installation
Beginning with System 6.0, Apple's Installer installed bitmapped fonts for Times, Helvetica, Courier, and Symbol. GCC includes Times, Helvetica, Courier and Symbol bitmaps with our printers as well, but the are different. Because GCC fonts originate from Bitstream, and Apple uses Adobe fonts in the LaserWriters, the character widths may vary slightly. In order to ensure that the correct widths are being used, you should first remove Times, Helvetica, Courier, and Symbol before installing GCC’s fonts. Installing GCC’s fonts over Apple’s may cause some line layout problems in printed documents.
• Temporary Memory
When running under MultiFinder or System 7.0, PLP 3.0 may use memory outside the application’s memory partition, if there is any available. This extra memory is called Temporary Memory.
When you choose ‘Print Now’ from the Print dialog, PLP 3.0 will make use of Temporary Memory. In many cases, documents which could not be printed from the application because of a lack of memory can now be printed because of PLP's use of Temporary Memory. You may no longer need to increase the ‘Application Memory Size’ value in the Get Info dialog of your application in order to print, since Temporary Memory is usually available. In fact, if an “Out of Memory” error occurs when printing with PLP 3.0, you may find that by reducing the ‘Application Memory Size’ value to the ‘Suggested Memory Size’ you will be able to print, because by reducing the application’s memory partition, you are making more Temporary Memory available.
• System Memory
Because PLP 3.0 resides in the System’s memory partition rather than in the application’s memory partition, you may find that documents which failed to print with PLP 2.4 from the application due to lack of memory can now be printed. Because PLP 3.0 is not using the application’s memory, more memory is available for printing from within the application.
• Imaging While the PLP is Not Ready
PLP software includes better handling of minor error conditions such as an empty or misplaced paper tray. Previously, the processing of pages was suspended while the error condition was satisfied. PLP 3.0 will continue to process the page; when it is ready to print it will pause for you resolve the error.
• Edge-to-Edge Printing
PLP 3.0 now supports edge-to-edge printing to a PLP IIs from a Macintosh Classic, Plus and SE. Previously this was not possible.
• PLP 3.0.1 Changes
GCC Print Manager 3.0.1 allows you to print documents spooled with PLP 2.x
The System 7 installation script now deletes old PLP drivers.
Fixes a bug where printing more than 31 copies of a page would not work.
Fixes an incompatibility with Microsoft Mail 3.0 which cause Microsoft Mail to crash when attempting to print.
Corrects some “Out of Memory” problems when printing multiple documents from the GCC Print Manager application.
Corrects some spacing problems when using Adobe Type Manager.
Corrects potential problems with Articulate Systems Voice Navigator as well as other SCSI devices which may access the SCSI bus during VBL tasks.
