Printing services

[D1830@AppleLink.Apple.COM (Jack Swisher & Assoc, M Wimble,PRT)]

>Is this a request for the MCL team (Gary, Alice, and me) to provide
>better hardcopy support
 (definitely needed) or a complaint about
>Macintosh printing in general?
 
I haven't thought too much about how to get better printing services out of
MCL, although it definitely needs to be addressed.  My complaint really was
about Mac printing in general.  For instance, in my big office automation
package I'm writing (coming as a product soon to your local dealer?), I need to
do the following:
    Send 3 copies of the following pages to the laser printer holding envelopes
with my company logo on them.  This may be a "logical" laser, the physical
laser being one with a sheet feeder holding 4 types of paper.
    Send 3 copies of the following pages to a laser holding company letter
head, but all copies but the first need to have "COPY" written in a large
outline font in the background.
    Send 3 copies of the following pages to a laser holding plain paper.
    Tell the user when each of these sets is done on each printer.
    Tell the user when all sets on all printers are done for this "job".
    Tell the user when all "jobs" are done for the current session.
The user needs to be able to do all the normal spooling stuff that you can do
on, say, a large IBM computer, i.e.: stop jobs, reorder stuff, prioritize
stuff, change printers, change paper types, change copies, change page ranges,
send sub ranges of pages to different printers, manage printers, manage access,
etc.
 
Know anyone that cares?  Maybe I should build this as a third party product,
but then Apple would just offer it as standard software about a year later and
then I'd be peddling apples on the street.  Actually, anyone who puts any
thought into this at all will come up with an even bigger list of things that
you would expect a computer of the Mac's caliber to be able to do.  It is,
after all, a networked computer that supports multiple shared printers.