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“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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I'm known for my long-winded emails 
Software Zen: delete this;
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I got out of color ink and I was getting a message to print in black until the black went out of ink too.
Then I replaced all...
Now when I print in "grey scales" the ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ing printer is using 4 different cartriges...
Why can't they just allow the "only use black ink" as standard option?
(this actually is a rethoric question, I don't need an answer, just wanted to rant a bit)
[rant off]
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Anybody else read that as ‘frigging pointers’?
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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Could have been it as well 
Sadly I was moved to another department and my programming has been drastically reduced
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Computer history section:
In my student days, line oriented editors - as opposed to screen oriented - were still around; teletype class terminals could be seen, and line editors were in use for many years after screens took over. We received the manual for the new editor version, containing a tiny misprint ... The section on the command 'L - move the current line pointer' came out in the large, boldface headline font as 'L - move the current line printer' 
There is a sequel to that story:
The typical student accessible printer at the time was a GE Terminet - "sort of" a line printer: It had a continuously running rubber 'tractor belt' with metal fingers for each letter (sort of like old style typewriter hammers). Behind the belt was 132 solenoid hammers, one for each character position. When the 'a' finger passed over a line position where an 'a' should be printed, the hammer stroke the finger to hit the paper (through an ink ribbon). When the 'b' finger passed over where a 'b' should be printed, that hammer stroke as well - possibly at the exact same time as the 'a' in another print position.
We tried to construct printout lines that would make all 132 hammers strike at the same time. That turned out to be impossible, but with a line of alternating space and every second finger on the ribbon, like 'a c e f ...', 66 hammers would hit the fingers, paper and roller, at exactly the same time. The impact made the printer make a small jump forward. We had a software implementation of "Move the current line printer"! We made a small utility for generating such lines, and discussed whether we should name it 'L', in honor of the QED manual misprint, but it ended up being called BANG - "BANG 5" would print five such lines in rapid succession, generating five quite loud bangs, and causing the printer to make five small jumps forward.
5 was the maximum. If we exceeded that, the power supply broke down and had to be replaced. I think we burned out four or five power supplies before the technical service guys discovered what caused it, and we were sternly told that any use of the BANG program in the future would result in the guilty one(s) being kicked out of the university
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An old mentor gave us a course on these types of printers as well as others like drums, etc
He then went into details like you describe on how to “test” (not torture) the various types.
Thanks for bringing back those great memories.
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This reminds me... The company I worked for a long time ago was given the contract for managing the computer system for a local credit union. The system was an HP 9000 'supermini', and had several of the old 300MB 9-platter disk drives that were the size of washing machines. The first night that we ran the end of month processing for the credit union, which really hammered the data base, we discovered that the HP installer guy had neglected to bolt the drives in place on the raised computer floor. As a result, the drives took a walk, pulled their cables, and everything came to a resounding, crashing, halt.
As I recall, we had a team from HP out replacing hardware and rebuilding the machine for several 24-hour days, during which transactions were recorded on paper.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I use a laser. Not a laser printer, an industrial cutting laser I got for another project, at the lowest setting and highest speed (6w 300mm/s) it is just enough to scorch the paper. Zero ink needed! Though it's brown, not black, and is best read with a backlit table (like an xray), not to mention significantly more fragile so avoid designs including things like large boxes. Or just glue or laminate it to a piece of black card stock for contrast and strength.
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Memtha wrote: Though it's brown, not black
Computer history:
In the days when "Office Automation" was a new concept, lots of secretaries had never seen a terminal or a computer - and certainly not in underdeveloped countries. I was teaching our new office automation system to a group of secretaries at UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization); several of them from third world countries. When I told them where to find the switch to turn on the terminal, "just like how you turn on an electric typewriter", they gave me a strange look: Electric typewriter?? They had never seen such a thing!
After a week long course, we spent the last half hour on reactions to the Office Automation system, with automatic pagination, automatic justification, easy editing of mistyping, adding, moving or removing text, automatic chapter numbering ... The very first reaction that came up, and the only one that all the course participants agreed upon, was: "The ribbon in the printer is so black. Cold, harsh, unfriendly! We don't want to send out letters having that hard look! Couldn't we get a ribbon with a more brownish, rather than bluish, black?"
Seen from the view of the software developer (I had just become responsible for one of the components), it was like a blow in the face: All this fancy functionality we had developed, ant they were not impressed? Well, maybe they were, but the very most important thing to them was the tone of the printer ribbon!
It did teach me a lesson about listening to customers, their priorities may be quite different from yours, if you are a software developer. I was happy to see that after returning to my office, we made a request to Philips (they made printers back then!) for brownish-black ribbons, and they reported back that they acknowledged it as an important issue, and would investigate the possibility of making ribbons with an alternate, more brownish black tone.
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And to this day, black letters still use magenta ink to be brownish.
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Nelek wrote: Why can't they just allow the "only use black ink" as standard option?
That's probably a problem in the driver, not the printer. It could also be something in the color management (ICC profiles and such) that defines shades of gray as specific CMYK values rather than just a %K. There are also cases where you can only achieve certain gray levels using CMYK. This is determined by drop size, the number of drops per pixel, and how intensity of a particular pixel is created.
Black inks especially tend to be optimized for performance when printing pure black text. They're not so good at gray scales.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote: Black inks especially tend to be optimized for performance when printing pure black text. They're not so good at gray scales.
I would not choose grey scales, if I had black as option
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nelek wrote: Why can't they just allow the "only use black ink" as standard option?
As a guess because the company is in the business of making money rather than printers.
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I love this language except when it's used cryptically. You can produce more incomprehensible code with C++ than I think you can in any other major language.
I'm poring over C code right now - C really isn't that much better, but fortunately you can do less with it. The code is evil. It's absolutely terrible to read, almost as if they were *trying* to hide intent.
Porting it to C++ is my fresh hell.
I love this language, but would it kill people to write readable code, or at least comment it with something *helpful*?
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is C++ is both my favorite and least favorite language. It's weird like that.
Real programmers use butterflies
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You would love Perl, methinks. There is no such thing as unreadable code written in that language.
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Fair. I forgot about perl. Mercifully.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Agreed! 
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honey the codewitch wrote: You can produce more incomprehensible code with C++ than I think you can in any other major language
Hahahahaha ... not even close.
Work this out:
⎕←(~A∊A∘.×A)/A←1↓⍳N
or this:
life ← {⊃1 ⍵ ∨.∧ 3 4 = +/ +⌿ ¯1 0 1 ∘.⊖ ¯1 0 1 ⌽¨ ⊂⍵}
C++ can't even come close to APL for code density or incomprehensibility! 
The first one is the Sieve of Eratosthenes, the second is the Game of Life.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Does anyone actually use APL anymore though? I mean significantly, not just people porting old code and the like? According to Wiki the last stable release was 21 years ago.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Surprisingly, yes: Today, APL remains in use in a wide range of commercial and scientific applications, for example investment management,[82] asset management,[91] health care,[92] and DNA profiling,[93][94] and by hobbyists.[95]
I suspect APL programmers will tell you the last stable release was perfect, so it hasn't needed changing since ... they are generally an odd bunch, APL programmers ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: Today, APL remains in use in a wide range of commercial and scientific applications, for example investment management,[82] asset management,[91] health care,[92] and DNA profiling,[93][94] and by hobbyists.[95]
So that's 4x no one can understand the ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ing stuff well enough to port ancient legacy code, and 1x ![Sunshine | [little ray of sunshine]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/sunshine.gif) s playing code golf. 
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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