screendump part of Sun screen, etc.

[Howard C. Hart]

>From laic!leadsv!pyramid!voder!apple!ames!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request Mon Jul 24 20:00:11 PDT 1989
>
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 73, message 8 of 19
>
>I would like to know how to clip part of Sun screen (say, interior of one
>window) to be printed on Apple LaserWriter and Imagen (which can't talk in
>Postscript).  Another question is how I can screendump(and clip-screen
>dump) a color screen to a COLOR laser printer with Postscript capability.
>(We haven't had one yet, but would like to know how it can be done.)
>Thanks in advance.
>
>-Pan (pantz at cpsvax.cps.msu.edu)
>
>
>From laic!leadsv!pyramid!voder!apple!ames!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request Mon Jul 24 20:00:27 PDT 1989>
>
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 73, message 19 of 19>
>
>Hello,  we are adding SUNs to our list of supported "platforms" at
>Queen's.  The relevant configuration now looks like VM/CMS, PCs with
>Related question:  I have had a look at the SunCore documentation (though
>not SunGKS, or SunCGI) -- the whole software package seems devoted to
>producing graphics on the monitor;  I did not see any way of producing
>hard-copy from it.  Did I miss something in the documentation?  or is

>From laic!leadsv!pyramid!voder!apple!bionet!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request Mon Jul 24 20:01:18 PDT 1989
>
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 75, message 12 of 15
>
>on the AppleTalk network.  We would like to do as much of the following as
>possible:
>
>1.  Screen dumps to printers from our SUN color and b/w terminals
>2.  Print PostScript files and format text files for PostScript

This is one Sun should have bundled with their OS (in fact every hardware
vendor should bundle this) a long time ago. It's simply assinine to ship
graphics workstations with as much power as a Sun AND FORGET TO INCLUDE
ANY SIMPLE SCREEN SAVING CAPABILITY!!!!! (Are you listening Sun????!!!!!).
When I say this, I don't count screendump. Why? Because how many people
want to know the time, the current cpu utilization, the console error
messages for that day and all the other GARBAGE THAT COMES WITH A
FULLSCREEN DUMP AHHHHHHH, AHHHHHH!!!!!!! (Sung to the tune of Sam
Kenison).

Well, enough, tirade over. After wasting close to a month pulling my hair
out on this one, I was lucky enough to spot "dumpregion.c" in the Sun
Spots archives. It's short, sweet, and relatively bug free, and most
importantly, it allows you to save any portion of your screen via and
expandable transparent box. If you need copies and can't get to the
archives, drop me a request by email and I'll ship it out.  Some gotchas
to watch for are:

1) You need to set the -8bit_color_only option on suntools for 3/60 color
machines. The overlay plane gets saved instead of the color image if you
don't.

2) The Sun 3/260 has a Suntools bug which can only be cured by the
addition of a sleep(5) call prior to the dumpregion.c pr_load call.  Sun
says this halts all frame buffer activity prior to saving of the image, I
say that sounds like voodoo logic, but it works, so I can't argue with the
results.

As for printing Sun rasterfiles over Appletalk lines hooked to
Laserwriters, were getting ready to implement some such set up, but it's
to complicated to go into over email without writing a novel. Trimmed down
to the bare essentials, you'll need a sun rasterfile to tiff convertor
which I've got (or PICT convertor (or Postscript convertor? have'nt tried
this yet but might be possible), something to trim the image from 8 bits
per pixel to 1 bit per pixel if you've got a color machine, TOPS file
transfer software, from what other netters have said, either KSPOOL from
Kinetics or wait until TOPS provides print spooling capability (both
options don't exist for Sun OS 4.X currently), and of course, a Kinetics
Fastpath box. (Someone on the net indicated a Berkeley? public domain
print spooler for Sun Ether<->Appletalk but I forget who). 

Phew, did I miss anything? Probably. If you have questions, drop me a
line.  Good luck.