Confirm Suspicion about the Print Queue 1

[Borvik]

I'd just like to confirm a suspicion I have about the print queue, as I've had a user asking about it.

Let's say you have a 32 MB Word document (unbelievably huge I know, but it works for this example), you go to file > Print and in the print dialog specify you want 5 copies printed. When this document shows up in the print queue it would show up as 1 job.

My question is about the job size. If I am correct the job size would end up being 32 MB * 5 copies = 160 MB in the queue. Is this correct and expected behavior? I'm guessing it is - and would love to tell the user this.

 

[danbpc]

Depending on the printer driver, and the kind of printer you have and the software you are printing from, you can get one of two types of printer documents.

With a Postscript printer, and smart software, and driver you could get a send once print many printer file. This is smart use of resources.

Then there is the dumb driver, software which sends many, prints once.

I have Microsoft office, and some versions of Acrobat which are dumb. I have found Creative Suites, Acobat 8, and Pagemaker to normally to be smart.

The Dumb driver is better for low end printers which rely on your computer to render each page. Files can be larger than the original because, color or greyscale images need to be rendered for printing, which means it could be a bitmap of a page.

 

[Borvik]

The user is trying to send a 32MB Word or PDF file for >=50 copies, and saying the queue grows to >1GB in size.

Thanks danbpc - that confirms it. I just needed someone to confirm it before I told them that was the case.

 

[gbaughma]

The user is trying to send a 32MB Word or PDF file for >=50 copies, and saying the queue grows to >1GB in size.

It also depends on a couple of other factors.

If you are using a PCL printer and printing PDF files, it has to rasterize (convert into dots) the PDF file, which can quite often make it very large.

If the Word document is using a font that is not native to the printer, then the computer needs to download that font to the printer first, making the print job larger.

If they are printing multiple pages (obviously, with a 32MB file), and they're not collating the pages (1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,etc.) and instead are printing the job (1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3) and the printer doesn't have enough memory to cache all those pages, the print queue will get bigger.

Print resolution plays a part. A 600dpi print job is ***4 times*** bigger than a 300dpi print job.

As you can see, there are a lot of factors that come into play, and a lot of things that can be done to make things faster and smaller. In theory, if the user doesn't collate the pages, each page will be sent once, with a command for the printer to "do 50 of those", then the next page will be sent, etc. making the entire print queue the same size (+/- a few bytes) as if it was printed once.

But who wants to hand-collate 50 copies? ;-)



Just my 2¢
-Cole's Law: Shredded cabbage

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[Borvik]

Yes, fortunately though I just have to tell them it's normal - and they can ignore it. It's still printing, its apparently just an over-anxious user watching things they have no real business watching (other than when the tech asks for the info).

 

[gbaughma]

But at least it was informative?



Just my 2¢
-Cole's Law: Shredded cabbage

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[Borvik]

Yes.

 

[BionicJohn]

Certainly the higher end apps and heavyweight hardware which are geared to large runs are more efficient in the way they print multiple copies of large and possibly imposed documents.

You could try temporarily setting the default number of copies (5?) via the printer properties BEFORE you print, and then use the application's print menu to print a single copy. This may reduce the amount of data spooled to the printer as it uses the data 5 times instead 5 lots of data.

As pointed out before, it does depend on the printer and its associated software.

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