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For Xerox Internal Use Only -- June 21, 1977
EARS, GEARS, SEARS June 21, 1977 1
EARS, GEARS, SEARS, and Other Related Items
(Revised 8 April 1975)
(Revised 21 June 1977)
The EARS printing system is available in CSL room 2077. The
EARS system may be accessed directly from any machine on the Ethernet.
ALTOs currently may access EARS via the program GEARS which is
described in this memo. Access to EARS via MAXC is described in
another memo. The use of PUB with respect to EARS is also described in
another memo.
1. EARS
EARS is a one page per second printing system consisting of an
Ethernet. Alto, RCG (Research Character Generator), and SLOT/700a. The
EARS system is designed to spool more than 1000 pages of output on its
disk and to print graphic art quality documents. Up to 190 individual
documents may be spooled simultaneously.
EARS does no page composition. Page composition is done by
other computers on the Ethernet. This approach distributes the
composition load, minimizes changes to the EARS system software, and
allows users to write their own special composition software. The
standard EARS File Format allpws a user to get at all of the features
of EARS while also allowing simple pages to be easily composed.
The EARS system will print multi-page documents in portrait.
landscape, or mixed mode. The system is designed with the following
limits:
1. 15k characters/page (including directives)
2. 512 text strings/page
3. 128 characters/font
4. 16 fonts/page
5. 64 font sets/document
6. 500 pages/document
7. 32k words of compressed font storage/font set
8. 600k words of guaranteed document storage space
on disk at connect time
tL
For Xerox Internal Use Only -- June 21, 1977
EARS, GEARS, SEARS June 21, 1977 2
2. SEARS
SEARS is the subsystem that may be run on the ALTO named Palo to
start the EARS system. Once EARS has been started, it displays various
information about itself. There are two display areas on the ALTO
screen. The first is a journal that records ethernet transactions and
operator requests. The second records current system status such as
"spool ing", "printing", "call key operator", etc.
The printing system accepts the following keyboard commands from
an operator:
P print
B backspace printer (5 pages)*
o delete current file