Printing Mac Documents as Mosaic Documents

This page describes how to print arbitrary Mac documents (e.g., PowerPoint slides) as Postscript files or as inlined pixel images that can be browsed with Mosaic.

Printing to portable Postscript files on the Mac

You need the system extension HP Laser Jet in the System Extensions folder of your Mac. The corresponding printer is not needed. Ask Bernd Mathiske for help if necessary.
  1. Select Auswahl (in English systems: Chooser) from the Apple menu.
  2. Click on the HP Laser Jet Icon in the upper left box to select a new printer. Choose (click upon) a printer in the printer list on the right hand side. Recommendation: LaserJet 4 Plus (DBIS). Close the Auswahl window.
  3. Select the menu item Seite einrichten... (Page Setup...) in menu Datei to configure the characteristics of the HP Laser Jet printer driver.
  4. Make sure that the paper size (A4) and the orientation (landscape) are set correctly. You may also specify that several slides (2 or 4) shall fit on 1 printed page, being scaled down accordingly.
  5. Click on Options in the printer setup dialog box to set the other options. In general they should all be switched off.
  6. Close the dialog box (OK button).
  7. Select Drucken... and change Ziel to Datei.
  8. Print your document 'as usual' with the command Sichern.
  9. A file selector box appears. You may now specify the file name.
  10. Make sure that the popup menu Format is set to PostScript-Job and Aufzunehmende Schriften and is set to Keine. The radio buttons ASCII and Kompatibel zu Stufe 1 must be selected.
  11. Click on the button Sichern. The resulting Postscript document can be copied to the Suns without using frommac.
  12. After all remember to choose and reconfigure a printer in order to print on paper, again.

Printing to Pixel Images on the Mac

You need the (shareware) system extension Print2Pict (at least version 3.5) and its associated device drivers in the System Extensions folder of your Mac. Furthermore, you should make sure that all the fonts used in your document are available in the system folder. Otherwise, you will get a somewhat distorted output. Ask Thomas Sidow for help if necessary.
  1. Select Auswahl from the Apple menu.
  2. Click on the Print2Pict 3.5 Icon in the upper left box to select a new printer. Close the Auswahl window (you are reminded to choose a new printer in all currently running applications).
  3. Create a new folder on your disk where the Mac pixel images (one per page) are to be stored (e.g., Pic Ausgabe).
  4. Select the menu item Seite einrichten... in menu Datei to configure the characteristics of the Print2Pic printer driver.
  5. Make sure that the paper size (A4 Letter), the orientation (landscape), and the disposition (Pixmap PICT) are set correctly.
  6. Click on Options in the printer setup dialog box to set the other options
  7. Warning: Print2Pic returns the orientation settings to portrait after each print job. Therefore, don't forget to click on the landscape button. However, the other settings and options typically don't need any fine tuning if they are set properly once.
  8. Close the printer setup dialog box (OK button).
  9. Print your document 'as usual' with the command Drucken. Each page is written to a separate file that is stored in the folder you have created in step 3 above. For very long documents (larger than 40 pages), you may run out of memory during printing. Then you have to restart the Finder and resume printing with the last page that has been processed.

Converting Mac Pixel Images to HTML Documents

  1. Copy the complete output folder (e.g., Pic Ausgabe) with all its files onto the shared Mac volume DBIS.
  2. Login on the Mosaic server and cd to the directory where you want a new directory with the slides to be created.
  3. You can now execute the command ConvertSlides to transfer and convert the slides. For example, 
    ConvertSlides 'Pic Ausgabe' 'Termin3' 'PPP 03 - Folien'
    convents the contents of the folder Pic Ausgabe on the volume $MAC to a newly created folder Termin3 in the current directory. The third string PPP 03 - Folien is used as the running title of each newly created HTML document.
  4. You can now link the page entry.html in the newly created folder into your Mosaic document. You may also want to edit the contents of the overview slide to provide a more useful outline of the document.
  5. Please don't forget to delete the temporary folder on the Mac.
Bernd Mathiske (5-NOV-94)