(no subject)

Got the printer issue resolved after everyone came home; there was a difference of opinion regarding whether or not the printer was set as the print server's default. I am vindicated, la.

Then I discovered that I actually really do need PDFs, because a 12-meg HTML file, plus images, crushed three separate web browsers' attempts to print it. OmniWeb came closest to success by printing something, printing everything in fact, but insisting on putting all text and images at what looks like 1/12th scale.

My hopes rose when I found a Debian package called xmlto which purports to be an abstract front-end to XML workflows, and then fell again when I saw (through Google) that the arcane TeX error messages it spews on the XSL-FO->PDF step afflicts lots of other people too, and nobody's (publically) figured out how to fix it. My websearching was not totally in vain, thankfully: one poster mentioned HTMLDoc, a system for tranforming structured HTML into PDF, as a fine interim solution for DocBook work. I tried it, and lo! It actually seems to work. Yay.

So, I will have my hardcopy tomorrow. Now, I sleep.

Pathetic

Listening to "Hit the Road Jack" on the radio, and I giggle every time the chorus says WHAT YOU SAY !!

I hate hardware

The printer now seems to print everything except the book. Frustrating: I send it the book's TOC just to see what happens, and I can track the data's journey through my iBook's print server to cricket's, and then from cricket to termite, the printer itself (so N christened it, in keeping to the morgul.net insect theme (partial explanation: beyond its new role as print server, cricket is primarily the house MP3 server)). Termite, being a cheap printer, has a UI consisting wholly of two lights (a green OK light and an amber UH-OH light). I can tell that it got the data from cricket, because it sets its green light to winking: it's in rumination mode. And there it stays, for at least five minutes, until I give up and see what effect poking its single button might have. As it happens, this causes it to flush its internal queue and print out its test page. Whatever. I'm gonna go get some coffee and figure this out later.

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Also, I was unfair to myself yesterday, in saying I hadn't done anything completely orginal beyond ComicsML since leaving Maine: I designed Currents, a board game. But I started the design before I signed the P&X contract, and haven't had the time to develop it further in a whole year. So, yes. More of that.