Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    My NEC LC890 was about $3000, but that was a while ago, and I'm sure
    prices have come down since then.  The LC800-series uses LEDs rather
    than a laser, which is supposed to decrease the maintenance costs.
    I don't know about that, my printer hasn't needed any maintenance yet,
    aside from adding toner.
        John Sauter

    
    There should be some low-cost ($500) PostScript cartridges available
    for the HP LAserJet IIP sometime soon.  With a base price of $1000, and
    anpther $400 for several megabytes of additional printer memory, you
    could get into PostScript for undr $2k.
    
    A cheaper approach would be to buy a PS emulator and use it with an HP
    LaserJet, DeskJet, or high-quality 24 pin dot matrix printer.
    
    Ed.

The POST02.LZH file Ed uploaded to TAPE:: does a nice job of outputting to
the postscript to the Amiga screen. It may do a good job at printing to a dot
matrix printer (at lease for preview)

John

    John,
    
    re: .3
    
    I downloaded POST02 to my amiga, extracted everything according to the
    directory structure in the .LZH file, then ran "POST demo.ps SCREEN".
    This ran fine and I could toggle to the display screen using Amiga-M.
    What I found was that the graphic images displayed fine but during the
    display of the examples I got a system requester several times asking
    for volume PSFONTS: (I think that's it), which I don't have so I just
    clicked CANCEL and everything kept on going. Obviously POST is trying
    to load some postscipt font information which I don't have.
    
    What I really want to be able to do is preview postsript output from
    WordPerfect (using font Times-Roman). POST would not do this - said it
    found invalid font information. Fair enough, I don't have the font info
    required.
    
    So now the questions...
    
    Where can I get the font stuff POST wants in PSFONTS: to display all
    the demo.ps screen?
    
    There are some font packages available commercially for a package
    called something like PrintScript or maybe support for Professional
    Page or something like that. Do you know if any of those might have the
    necessary goodies to allow POST to preview WP output (even if I have to
    fudge the WP postscript output to use a different font name)?
    
    POST doesn't have anyway of scrolling the screen image at present (the
    top half is cut off). Are there any other postscript viewers avaliable
    for the Amiga? Any experience with PSINTRP on FF90-100?
    
    Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.
    
    Simon.

I'm not sure about PostScript fonts. Did you try just pointing PSFONTS: to
FONTS: (or wherever your WP fonts are)?

John

	POST02 documentation is very clear about it: 'there are no fonts
	built into the interpreter; they must all be downloaded'.

	So you go into INIT.PS where <findfont> is defined and that's
	where PSFonts: comes from. You can assign it to point anywhere
	but the catch is you need a PostScript font definition because
	POST02 will try and <run> it. Amiga fonts are no good.

	I have ProScript (that translates ProWrite files into PostScript)
	and it comes with the standard Times, Helvetica, Courier and
	Symbols .font fonts as well as additional .metric files but that
	doesn't help.

	Other than that, I think POST02 does a very good job.
Yv

    I attempted to view a document created by PageStream that has
    downloaded fonts.  No luck.  It flagged a particular Postscript
    statement as not being valid.  Guess it isn't all implemented yet.  I
    got the impression that PageStream's PS driver is pretty generic.
    
    Too bad.  I was looking forward to getting a good previewer.
    
    -Gary
    

RE:.7

	I don't know about PageStream but it works fine with ProScript.
	You have to do some homework though. ProScript, which generates
	PostScript output from ProWrite documents comes with the four
	standard PostScript fonts (Courier, Helvetica, Times & Symbol)
	in addition to the normal Amiga fonts. However, it treats them
	differently. PostScript fonts comes with an additional .metric
	file and do not generate any extra code, whereas Amiga fonts
	are transformed into PostScript bitmap fonts (there is another
	option but it's not relevant). This is all controlled by the
	presence/absence of the .metric files.

	ProScript is smart enough to generate bitmap descriptions of
	only those characters that appear in that font in the document.
	Also, if several sizes/style of fonts appear in a document,
	only the largest is considered for bitmap description, the
	others are scaled/slanted from that.

	So what I did was, for each PostScript font and for each point
	size (9 10 12 14 18 24) produce a ProWrite document containing
	the whole character set once, and run ProScript on it after
	emptying the Prologue.PS file, thus generating 24 PostScript
	bitmap files. There is one last thing to do to make POST02
	happy, and that is removing all the garbage at the end of each
	file (ie the document per se).

	Then, with all the above in one directory (say PSFonts:), all
	you have to do from POST02 is:

		(init.ps) run     	 % to define findfont
		(prologue.ps) run 	 % to define bitmap procedures and
				  	 % Amiga encoding

		(Helvetica-24) run	 % to pre-load Helvetica-24, or
		/Helvetica-24 findfont   %ill find it when needed

	The reason for having several bitmaps for the same font is
	scaling fonts up or down distorts them quite siginificantly.


	I never said it was simple, but it does work.
Yv

        Has anyone tried LaserScript 
    PostScript Interpreter with PageSetter (I think it may be in Class
    of the 80s).
    
    		Pete

    re .9
    
    I use LaserScript to print PageSetter documents on the LN03R in
    the office.  It is very convenient to use and works perfectly every
    time.
    
    I bought the Publishers Choice package which has KindWords, PageSetter,
    Headline Fonts, Artist's choice Clipart, and Laserscript all for
    �69.
    
    I just read (Amiga Format - March) that PageSetter V2 is out but
    it uses Agfa Compugraphic Fonts.  As far as I know there is no
    LaserScript support.  This seems like a step back to me.
    
    There are some other things that concern me but possibly they are
    deficiencies in the review not the product. 
    
    Anyway I would highly recommend the Publishers' Choice package for
    reasonable use of a matrix printer and super quality PostScript
    at rock bottom price.
    
    Peter

It seems that Gold Disk decided that PageSetter will be a product 
for high quality output to dot matrix and ink jet printers, using 
the outline fonts.  If you need Postscript output, they offer 
Professional Page.

This surprised me at first, but later it made sense.  A lot of 
users just want good output from their old printers.  They don't 
want to spend the big bucks for PPage to get it.  PageSetter V2 
gives them a WYSIWYG page layout system that can combine text and 
graphics...that will give outstanding output to a non postscript 
printer.  The advent of the outline fonts makes this possible.

If you want the works, go with PPage.

Randy

    They're hardly the same league pricewise.
    
    Peter

               <<< Note 3451.12 by BELFST::MCCLINTOCK "Peter" >>>
                               -< Loadsa money. >-

    They're hardly the same league pricewise.
    
    Peter


Of course they aren't!  One is essentially a WYSIWYG word 
processor and the other is a fully capable publishing package.

Randy

>   Of course they aren't!  One is essentially a WYSIWYG word 
>   processor and the other is a fully capable publishing package.
 
    Don't misunderstand me .. I wasn't implying that PageSetter is like
    Professional Page for less money.  Simply that it was a basic DTP
    package that would support PostScript and Dot Matrix with minimum
    outlay.   This is now gone with V2.
    
    PageSetter is, however, much more than a WYSIWYG WP.  It can manipulate
    fonts, graphics, boxes, shading, overlaying etc.  I realise that
    some WPs can do this kind of thing, but in a very different way.
    
    I haven't had a look at Professional Page but compared with PageMaker
    on DOS PageSetter isn't quite as smooth but it is easier to work with
    and not far behind. 

    Peter

     This probably belongs somewhere else. Oh well.
     
     The February issue of Amazing Computing/Amiga (or whatever the title
     is ;-) ) provides a table comparing features of Pagestream, City Desk
     and Professional Page. I have not used any of these packages, so
     my preference would be ProPage, based on the recommendations in this
     conference. However, when I look at the table in Amazing, I get the
     impression that Pagestream has nearly the same capabilities as ProPage
     for half the price. In the table, which compares some 40 different
     features, the "only" features where ProPage wins are in support for
     the 2024 monitor, maximum number of pages (9999 to 255) and
     "Full-Featured Graphics Editor" (Pagestream can only edit structured
     graphics). Pagestream wins in a number of other catagories.
     
     Of course the article says that Pagestream has a reputation for
     crashing... It seems that the first line of the table should
     have compared stability. ;-)  Anyhow, the writer seems to hope
     the new version, 1.8, will not crash. I guess it pays to
     read the "fine print" before buying by feature/$$$.
     At $199 for Pagestream, it is theoretically in the same
     league as Excellence, Pen Pal etc., each of which is
     >>essentially a WYSIWYG wordprocessor
     Dave

Pagestream can not do true color separation of IFF or HAM images. 
It seems to have trouble handling color well.  This was 
documented quite well in an article in INFO magazine a few months 
back.  The screen representation of the page layout is not as 
well displayed as PPage.

Professional Page also has the outline fonts.  These are quite 
important when you work with kerning and positioning of 
headlines.  It also allows you to get amazing output from you dot 
matrix or ink jet printer.  This is truely a CAWYGWBEBTWYS,AGATI 
package (chances are what you get will be even better than what 
you see, as good as that is.)  This feature alone allows me to 
get accurate comps of my work without having to go to a service 
bureau for output...until I need to.