Printing on Suns from Mac II (using TOPS)

[Kerry Gough]

Greetings, all...

I thought I had already submitted this problem, but I have yet to see it
posted. If it has been posted already, please disregard.


We are using TOPS/Sun and TOPS/Mac to transfer files between our Sun
server (3/160 running 3.5) and our Mac II. The software itself runs fine,
but it brings up other problems. Namely, the files we are sending from the
Mac are PostScript files created with Adobe Illustrator '88, and we need
some way to print them. I know about TOPS/Spool, but that seems to be
designed around a printer (or printers) connected directly to the network.
Since NASA basically has one large network, I really don't want to put my
printers out on the net where just anybody can get to them. The TOPS tech
staff tells me that there is currently no way to print from the Mac
directly to a printer on the Sun, but that there will be in a future
release scheduled to hit the market in about six months (which means "in a
year if we're lucky"). I realize that a daemon program can be written to
pick up any new files in a given directory and print them, but I know
virtually nothing about writing daemon processes, and have little or no
free time to learn. Has anybody out there written such a program? If so,
is there a copy somewhere that I can get to and use?

Also, there is another problem: when files are printed from the
Illustrator software, a "printer setup" menu pops up which allows the user
to specify several things about the page setup, such as orientation (i.e.,
portrait or landscape), scaling, etc. Just transferring the file without
going through the print command in the Illustrator means that all this
info is never added to the PostScript file, and often means the files will
not print out. As far as I can tell, there is no way to print from this
menu to a file. Does anyone have any brilliant ideas about some way around
this problem? Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks, 
Kerry

Kerry M. Gough
NASA-Langley Research Center
Mail Stop 149
Hampton VA 23665
(804)864-2496

email: kerry at teb.larc.nasa.gov