Tony ([info]quikchange) wrote,
@ 2007-02-13 19:15:00
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Current mood: predatory
Entry tags:geeky

A checkbox for collation
We're doing a "book club" type deal with a product manual at work so I needed to print out a section of the manual and mark it up with red pen. However, when I tried to print it out on my Linux system, it wouldn't work. Not particularly shocked, I asked a coworker to print it from his Windows machine, since mine isn't configured to print. When he brought up the Print dialog, I noticed that there was a checkbox labelled "collate" beside the text field for specifying the number of copies to be printed. Not entirely sure what it meant, we clicked the little interrogation mark in the title bar and then on the checkbox to bring up a tooltip. The tooltips contents made my eyes roll: "this checkbox allows you to specify whether or not you want your pages to be collated."

It turns out that enabling collation prints out each copy of the entire document in sequence, instead of having all copies of each page together. I tried hard but haven't been able to think of a reason why somebody might not want their pages collated. Something tells me this checkbox was added with little thought to the user's needs.


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[info]backguy
2007-02-14 04:07 am UTC (link)
I've used collation when printing multiple copies double-sided. I print off n copies of page 1, put the outputted pages back in the feeding tray, and let the printer print on the reverse side. It's more convenient than printing off n copies one page at a time.

That said, this is only useful on printers that print single-sided. I don't think I've ever used collate otherwise.

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[info]quikchange
2007-02-14 02:21 pm UTC (link)
There are better ways to collate now, like using tentacles.

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Eggscellent acting
(Anonymous)
2007-02-16 01:22 am UTC (link)
That actor playing the PC is really good! I watched this ad over and over enjoying his acting.

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jfpoole
2007-02-14 05:06 am UTC (link)
I vaguely recall collation being a HOT FEATURE in some version of Windows (3.0? 3.1?). I think the checkmark exists because of historical reasons.

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Historical indeed
(Anonymous)
2007-02-15 08:33 pm UTC (link)
But for much older reasons:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=define%3Acollate&btnG=Search
gives a quick overview.

In the days of old (the first printing presses that had a type setter actually... well... set blocks of lead type onto rails) you had to print multiple copies of each page because the cost was in the setting more than the printing. That was after all the revolution that the printing press brought to the world.

This is still the case in offset printing and production of signatures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookbinding

Early computers didn't have enough memory to rasterize an entire document into memory and print it. Same deal with early photocopiers that didn't have paper feeds (you had to copy one page at a time).

For pretty much any home use though it is but a historical artifact and checked on by default. Not sure why it's still included in the print config.

The only other reason I could think of is before photocopiers were able to staple or stagger collated copies people would often print un-collated. Then when you are giving your lecture or what not you set up stacks of page 1, stacks of page 2... stacks of page n along the front of the room and you have people do a cafeteria-collate of your handout. Otherwise you would just have 1 big stack and have to count the n pages and hand them to each person.

shawn

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[info]jbdeboer
2007-02-14 01:51 pm UTC (link)
Back in the day, collating was a hot secretarial skill; now we just let computer do it.

You likely don't know how to run the tab stops in Word either :-)

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(Anonymous)
2007-02-15 07:14 am UTC (link)
Coworker's Windows machine? I thought you had a Windows NT 4 VM for printing documents...

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[info]quikchange
2007-02-15 01:09 pm UTC (link)
No, none of my VMs are set up for printing. That NT VM is just for debugging my code.

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Code?
(Anonymous)
2007-02-16 01:24 am UTC (link)
Curious, what languages do you use at work?

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Re: Code?
[info]quikchange
2007-02-16 05:16 am UTC (link)
Almost all of the Linux UI for Workstation is written in C++ but some of the layers below it are written in C. The Eclipse plugin, obviously, is all Java. Other people in the company use C# (for the Windows native UI of Virtual Center), Python (for the new build system), Javascript (for the Web UI of Virtual Center), Objective-C (for the Fusion UI) and Perl (for the Linux installation/config script and the automated test suites).

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