Why does Altos UNIX V "lprint" print so S L O O O W?

[Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR]

As quoted from <1143 at twg.bc.ca> by bill at twg.bc.ca (Bill Irwin):
+---------------
| Altos has added an extension/enhancement to the lp spooling
| system called "lprint", which is supposed to use the TERM setting
| to look up the entry in /etc/termcap and find the start/stop
| transparent printing codes to send to the terminal in order to
| print the file.  This is all working (after turning on onlcr in
| stty to get the file to print on more than one line 8^( ) except
| that the printer is running very slowly.  I mean, print a line -
| count one, two - print another line - count one, two.
+---------------

"lprint"?  Is this different from adding mc4, mc5, mc0 to the terminfo entry
and then telling pconfig you have a local printer on the terminal's port?  I
don't recall any "lprint" coming up in any of the local printer stuff we've
done, but I do recall a command of that name lying around somewhere.
(Needless to say, we ignored it.)

+---------------
| Is there some way of getting the system to burst data to the
| printer faster?  The terminal is running at 38,400 bps and the
+---------------

The pconfig-based terminal printing is done with hooks in the tty driver; it
works quite quickly, although you probably shouldn't expect to use the screen
at the same time.

"lprint" may be a hack to provide similar functionality without the kernel
hooks (hence, more portably, presumably).  If so, a hack is exactly what it
is:  unless somebody/something does extra work, you can have things go wrong.
Without kernel hooks, the tty driver won't guarantee that, say, your status
line program won't come out on the printer....

++Brandon
-- 
Me: Brandon S. Allbery			    Ham: KB8JRR on 2m, 220, 440, 1200
Internet: allbery at NCoast.ORG		(QRT on HF until local problems fixed)
America OnLine: KB8JRR // Delphi: ALLBERY   AMPR: kb8jrr.AmPR.ORG [44.70.4.88]
uunet!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery          KB8JRR @ WA8BXN.OH