Print to file performance

Hi,
I am using a virtual printer (shared on the network) with the adobe generic postscript driver to write files to postscript, and then process them further.

The write to file opeation is much slower than selecting "print to file" from the print driver.

Most of the delay seem to be caused between the file completing printing and data appearing in
... All Users\Application Data\Print Distributor\raw

The network is running at about 20% and, the cpu at 1% so I am not sure where the delay is comming from.

Alex,

How big is the print file? How much longer is it taking?

The behaviour is slightly different to the standard print to file function as we write out to a temporary file first then operate on that with each action. This wil take longer although it isn't normally very noticeable.

The file is a word doc with lots of graphs and pictures (about 7 MB).
It turns into a 95 MB ps file.

It takes about 40 sec for the file to completely apper in the ...\raw direcotry when sent over the network, and about 15s when printed locally.

The print to file option takes about 15 seconds, and printing to physical printer only takes 5 seconds (until the printes 100% of the document in its memory).

So print to file is taking the same time as Print Distributor when printing locally.

I'd expect printing over the network to be slower because there are a lot of RPC calls involved.

It's probably faster printing to the physical printer because there is no disk activity involved.

It might be worth looking at your anti virus software, if that is scanning the file as it writes it might cause a drop in performance.