Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Re. 0:
    
>   Can anyone recommend a good postscript laser printer at a reasonable
>   price for  use with postscript programs on the Amiga?
    
    It's not absolutely necessary to have a PostScript printer.  Any of the
    HP-compatible 300x300 dpi laser printers will do quite nicely assuming
    you install enough (1.5MB) memory.  If you have a bunch of existing
    PostScript files, you can get/use PixelScript (or a similar program
    from a Fred Fish disk) to produce high-quality output.

    I've using the NEC LC 890.  It's been reliable and the consumables
    aren't too expensive.
        John Sauter

    Do you recall what the going price is on the NEC John?
    
    Ken
    

	Has anyone experience with the new Commodore Laser called LPS2000
	I think ?

	Price, performance, running costs etc.

	Thanks
	Helmut

    
    NEC Silentwriter 90 is PostScript and is selling for $1450. If you
    know someone at NEC,. they can get you one for $798.

    re: .3, .5
    
    When I bought it, several years ago, it was over $2000.  I saw a laser
    printer in System Eyes last night for $850, but it didn't have
    PostScript.
        John Sauter

Randy,

> I'm leaving DEC ...

Sorry to hear that.  Are you one of the 300 media services people leaving
that I read about?

	Paul

              <<< Note 4673.7 by CIMNET::KYZIVAT "Paul Kyzivat" >>>
                                 -< leaving? >-

>Randy,

> I'm leaving DEC ...

>Sorry to hear that.  Are you one of the 300 media services people leaving
>that I read about?

Yep, that's us.  I'm going freelance (in fact I have a few things lined up 
already.

I bought an HP Laserjet IIp on Friday.  I've been cranking out the promotional 
materials all weekend.  It works great, plus you can feed envelopes and legal 
sized paper through it without any problems (not possible with the LN03R).

I paid $1495. at Computer Hut in Nashua, NH.  I saw the Toshiba printer at 
System Eyes and was tempted, but I ran it through a few tests and it came up 
very short of what I wanted.

They are using the CG fonts in ProPage to create hi-res output on the printer. 
It looks pretty good.  You can't do landscape printing easily from ProPage.  
Halftones look pretty good, but you don't have the same control as Postscript.
Output is VERY slow, several minutes to print one page.  The CG fonts work, 
but not as well as Postscript (put a CG font page and a Postscript page side 
by side and you WILL see a difference.)  Letter spacing is not as acurate.  
Shaded graphics are not as good.

I figured I might as well go with TRUE postscript and be real happy instead of 
trying to fake it and be frustrated.

The HP Laserjet IIp comes with serial, parallel and appletalk ports built in.  
It has TRUE postscript built in or can print as a standard HP Laserjet printer 
(great screen dumps and text from the Amiga.)

Randy

    WHAT ??    the HPIIP doesnt print PostScript, unless you put in a Pacific
    Data PostScript cartridge or something similar.
    Is that what you did ??
     I am also in the market for a Laser Printer but havent decided to go
     with a native PostScript printer like the NEC p90 or to go with a HPIIP
     and a cartridge. I want to still be able to print normal text without
     having to do a lot of fiddling around. 
    

    re: .9
    
    The NEC PostScript printer has an operator panel that you can use to
    specify the software protocol.  If I remember correctly it can emulate
    a LaserJet or a Diablo 630.  I no longer use the emulations because of
    a PostScript printer driver that I located through this conference.
        John Sauter

    could you tell me where the Postscript printer driver is located.
    I would like to play with it and see how it works and try it out.
    Thanks in advance.
    John Lemoine    
    

The Laserjet IIp came with 1 meg additional memory and a postscript cartridge 
bundled for 1495.  Adding those on separately would cost more.

Randy

    The PostScript driver is at  TAPE::AMIGA:[UPLOAD]PS_DRIVER.LZH

    I have been seriously looking at a laser printer as well. Being able
    to support postscript  is a primary requirement - although I might not 
    get that immediately as I have pixelprint coming. I have considered the 
    TI/sharp microprint and the hp laserjet II/III p. Because of memory 
    support/usage the HP is on top of the list (the TI postscript card for
    the sharp/TI printer doesn't use the native ram!). 
    
    How much are the Postscript cartridges for both the IIp and the IIIp in 
    the states??
    
    r�egards
    kevin
    
    

    See 4618.5.  I scanned several recent ads for the prices posted there.

Re: .10

John,

> I no longer use the emulations because of a PostScript printer driver that
> I located through this conference.

What has been your experience with this driver?  Any limitations?  Full
support of all amiga standard printing, preference settings, etc.?

I presume you print actual postscript by copying it to SER: or PAR: instead
of PRT:?

	Paul

    I have not done extensive testing of all the preferences options, but
    I haven't noticed any features not working with the PostScript driver. 
    It handles text (w/ANSI bold, italics, underline, etc.), screen dumps,
    graphic printing from applications, all just fine.
    
    Yes, for direct PostScript output you send it straight to the SER: or
    PAR: port to bypass the driver.
    
    - Bruce -

My experience with it is that it uses the helvetica typeface for text.  It is
a proportional typeface so some things that line up on screen may not line
up in output.

As for screen dumps, I have the resolution set to the lowest setting.  It 
creates a beautiful halftone output.  The halftone even appears better than 
the ones created in ProPage from IFF files.

For text, I prefer to use the Laserjet driver.

Randy

    re: .16, .17
    
    My experience is the same.  I have noticed that I don't get quite 80
    characters across the page, but I avoid that problem by designing
    reports with less than 80 columns.
    
    re: .18
    
    In my system it prints as Courier.  I don't remember any switch to
    control the font.  Perhaps we have different versions?  I've written
    to the author asking if there is a later version, but I haven't
    heard back from him yet.
        John Sauter

    I'm confused.
    Can I used the PS_DRIVER to print a PS file on pixel type printer, say
    a LJ252?  If so how?  Is the PS_DRIVER a device like the PLT driver?
    
    Thanks,
    Rich

    The PS driver is used to print PRT output on a PostScript printer.
    To print PostScript text on a non-PostScript printer you would need
    a PostScript interpreter and some fonts.
        John Sauter

What advantage is there in a Postscript printer if I have the Compugraphic
fonts in ProPage?  I can rotate and scale these fonts to my heart's content.
Is the issue that there are far more Postscript fonts than Compugraphic
fonts available?

For those of you with a Postscript printer:  how do you get screen 
representations of your Postscript fonts in your applications?  How do
your applications "know" about the 35+ new fonts you have in your
printer?

Is there an inherent performance difference between a Postscript 
cartridge-equipped printer and a native Postscript
printer (aside from differences in print engine speed)?  I would expect
that both of these methods would be much faster than a software
interpreter such as Pixelscript, right?

Thanks!
Sam

         <<< Note 4673.22 by LEDS::SKRALY "Sam Skraly, DTN 237-6347" >>>
                        -< How valuable is Postscript? >-

>What advantage is there in a Postscript printer if I have the Compugraphic
>fonts in ProPage?  I can rotate and scale these fonts to my heart's content.
>Is the issue that there are far more Postscript fonts than Compugraphic
>fonts available?

As I said earlier, place a postscript page next to a CG font page and you WILL 
see a difference.  the letter spacing is far more acurate with Postscript.  
With Postscript you can rotate a complete page at any angle and print it at 
any proportion.  You can overprint several pages by using the no eject 
command.  You can control the line screen resolution of halftones.  Using the 
CG fonts, you can create jaggy free type.  that's about all.  Output is 
extremely slow.  (8 minutes per page for 300x300 output with graphics is not 
unusual.)  With postscript, things are much faster.

>For those of you with a Postscript printer:  how do you get screen 
>representations of your Postscript fonts in your applications?  How do
>your applications "know" about the 35+ new fonts you have in your
>printer?

I don't know.  I use courier for my 'normal' output.

>Is there an inherent performance difference between a Postscript 
>cartridge-equipped printer and a native Postscript
>printer (aside from differences in print engine speed)?  I would expect
>that both of these methods would be much faster than a software
>interpreter such as Pixelscript, right?

Right.

If you are serious about printing, page layout and design...and consistant 
predictable and quick output is important, Postscript is a must.  If you can 
settle for slow printing, unpredictable output of type and graphics, and can 
get by with output that looks good but not great, go the CG font route.  Many 
people will not be able to tell the difference.  But for those who make a 
living at this type of thing, it is important.

Randy

    Usually, PostScript fonts come with bitmap screen representations for
    several sizes.  Editors can use these Amiga fonts to show you an
    approximation of the printer page on your screen.  The bitmap fonts
    can't be rotated and are available in only a limited number of sizes.
        John Sauter

>CG fonts, you can create jaggy free type.  that's about all.  Output is 
>extremely slow.  (8 minutes per page for 300x300 output with graphics is not 

How fast would an equivalent page print on a comparable postscript printer?

>>For those of you with a Postscript printer:  how do you get screen 
>>representations of your Postscript fonts in your applications?  How do
>>your applications "know" about the 35+ new fonts you have in your
>>printer?

>I don't know.  I use courier for my 'normal' output.

You almost had me convinced, but now I'm confused again.  Are you saying
that you don't get an accurate screen representation of what you're doing?
.24 mentions that you get a limited number of screen representations
with some printer fonts, but it seems like the purpose of Postscript
is defeated if you can't see what you're doing before you print it, or
if you can only see what you're doing in a limited number of cases.
What am I missing?


>>Is there an inherent performance difference between a Postscript 
>>cartridge-equipped printer and a native Postscript
>>printer (aside from differences in print engine speed)?  I would expect
>>that both of these methods would be much faster than a software
>>interpreter such as Pixelscript, right?

>Right.

What about the first part of the question--specifically, how will an LJIIP 
or LJIII with Postscript cartridge compare to something like the NEC
Silentwriter Model 90, which is native Postscript?  Is the performance
dominated by the print engine speed or by the Postscript implementation?

I still don't understand how you access the Postscript fonts which you
get when you buy a Postscript printer or cartridge.  Can someone shed
some light?

Thanks for all the help!
Sam

    I don't have any experience with PostScript cartridges, but I have seen
    print jobs that were performance limited by the speed of the print
    engine (even on an LPS40 at 40 pages per minute) and I have seen print
    jobs that were performance limited by the speed of the PostScript
    interpreter.  It just depends on your application.  If you are printing
    images the performance limitation is usually the bandwidth between your
    host and the printer.
    
    PostScript implementations usually some with between 13 and 35 fonts,
    and you access them using PostScript operators, such as Findfont.
    Additional fonts can be sent to the printer, and once sent they are
    accessed just like the bundled fonts.
        John Sauter

If you want to access all of the postscript fonts, use an application that 
creates postscript files (i.e. ProPage.)  Using a standard WP package, and a 
postscript driver, you will probably get courier when you select draft 
printing and times roman when you select letter quality printing.

ProPage comes with screen representations of all basic postscript typefaces.  
Optional CG fonts are available to display them jaggy-free on the screen.  
Becuase they can appear jaggy-free on screen, the comuter can create a hi-res 
bitmap of those same fonts, and print them in hi-res to a dot-matrix, inkjet 
or standard laserprinter, with quality that approaches postscript.  
Approaches, but does not surpass.  Shades of gray will be interpreted using 
the Commodore printer drivers (using one of the shading protocols: 
floyd-steinberg, halftone, etc.)  These are not as acurate as true halftones, 
but look pretty good.

Printing time:  Postscript CAN take longer.  A lot of rotated type and 
graphics can take a long time for the printer to compute and print.  Using a 
postscript driver and CG fonts, you are just printing a hi-res bitmap image of 
the page, so the time should be the same, regardless of what is on the page 
(well almost:  additional bitmap graphics have to be reloaded by the program.)

A page of type, created with ProPage, and printed as postscript, using a 
resident font, will print very fast.  The same page, printed using CG fonts to 
a psotscript driver as a hi-res bitmap will take several minutes.

Does any of this make sense?  

If it doesn't, take a drive to a dealer and see it in action.

Again, postscript allows you to do all sorts of manipulation and distortion to 
the output page.

Randy

Article 807 of comp.sys.amiga.emulations:
Path: sousa.ltn.dec.com!shlump.nac.dec.com!decuac!haven.umd.edu!udel!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!laird
From: [email protected] (Laird Popkin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Subject: Re: Postscript printers
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 23 Apr 91 23:53:48 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Distribution: na
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 80

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (William Bill Hirt) writes:
>(Rich Andrews) writes:
>
>>I am considering getting a Postscript printer for my amiga.  The
>>models that I am considering are: the TI miscolaser, NEC silentwriter
>>2 model 90, QUME 410 or scriptTEN.  Suggestions? (Budget = ~$2000)
>
>One other printer you might want to consider is the HP IIP. I have a IIP
>with a Pacific Page Postscript cartridge. It emulates Adobe PS version 51.9.
>We have a QMS PS 2220 at work with genuine Adobe Postscript 51.0 and I
>haven't found anything yet which prints on one and won't print on the
>other. Street price on the IIP is now under $800. The Pacific Page
>cart is about $350 and comes with the standard 35 Postscript type families.
>You need to add a 2 meg card to the IIP for Postscript work. I got a 4
>meg card (populated) for under $500 for my IIP. Another $150 or so mail
>order can get you the under the printer 250 page sheet feeder tray.
>
>I have a friend which has the HP Postcript cartridge for the IIP and
>has found it to work well with ProPage for several months now. The
>advantage of the Pacific Page cart over the HP cart is that you can
>send a software reset to the printer to switch between Postscript and
>HP PCL mode. The HP cart requires you to remove it to drop back to PCL
>mode. 
>
>If you look around, you may be able find a close-out LaserJet II for
>around $1000. Adobe makes a Postscript cartridge for the II that sells
>for between $250-275 mail order. The Adobe cart only works on the
>LaserJet II. HP's cart works on the IIP, III, and IIID and is a licensed
>version of Adobe Postscript.
>
If you're looking specifically for a Postscript printer, I would advise
against the IIp.  Why?  First, it is pathetically slow when compared to any
other Postscript printer -- the primary factor seems to be that the IIp has
a very slow processor in it (it was designed mainly for priting simple
text).  Second, it's quite expensive to expand RAM and can't be expanded
otherwise.  A Postscript printer that I would recommend highly is GCC's BLP
II, which comes with 2 Mb RAM expandable to 4 by adding off the shelf
SIMMs, and it also has a SCSI port for adding a hard drive.  Best of all,
it lists for under $2K.  To use it from an Amiga you need to add a serial
or parallel port to the printer ($100 or so for both) because it comes
standard with only AppleTalk (aka LocalTalk).  Or get a LocalTalk port for
your Amiga (I've been looking for one, incidentally, if anyone has any info
I'd like to hear it).

>>How well does some of the packages for the amiga (ProPage 2.0, ProDraw,
>>Pagestream 2.1) use these printers?  Could I buy PS fonts and download
>>them instead of buying extra hardware (how well does that work).
>
>I have used ProPage 2.0 to print to my IIP with the Postscript cart. The
>change in ProPage 2.0 is that you must use the Postscript fonts in your
>document. Before, ProPage would convert the CompuGraphic fonts to the
>approriate Postscript fonts at print time. Why they changed this I have
>no idea and I have yet to get a response yet from Gold Disk why this 
>change was made.
>
>The Gold Disk CompuGraphic font series has a Postscript font downloader
>included in each font package. ProPage can also be told to download
>any fonts you are using in your document at print time. There are a 
>number of Type 1 Adobe fonts around from IBM and Mac land that you can use.
>The main thing is creating the AFM and metric files for use in ProPage. 
>There are several PD and shareware programs which do this. The other thing
>is you need to have enough additional memory in the printer to hold all
>your non-resident fonts while doing your print job. If you plan to to
>use a lot of downloaded fonts, 4 megs of printer memory would be a lot
>better than 2 megs. A 2 meg expansion on a IIP gives you 2.5 megabytes
>of memory which would probably be sufficent 99% of the time.

Of course, if you have a cheap 20 Mb hard drive on your printer, you only
need to download the fonts once <grin>.

>>Could I get a parallel PS printer to work under A-Max?  I would be
>>interested in using FreeHand, PageMaker, etc.  What drivers would I
>>need.  How well does A-MaxII handle the parallel connection?
>
>The IIP and the Pacific Page cart support serial communications if you 
>need to go this way with Amax.
>
>Bill

- Laird Popkin


Article 810 of comp.sys.amiga.emulations:
Path: sousa.ltn.dec.com!shlump.nac.dec.com!rust.zso.dec.com!pa.dec.com!decwrl!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!se-sd!cns!dltaylor
From: [email protected] (Dan Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Subject: Re: Postscript printers
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 24 Apr 91 22:24:54 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Distribution: na
Organization: NCR Corp. SE-San Diego
Lines: 45

In <[email protected]> [email protected] (Laird Popkin) writes:

>If you're looking specifically for a Postscript printer, I would advise
>against the IIp.  Why?  First, it is pathetically slow when compared to any
>other Postscript printer 

I'm getting 4ppm under PostScript & WordPerfect on my Amiga. I know this
isn't blazing, but it doesn't seem "pathetic".

>Second, it's quite expensive to expand RAM and can't be expanded
>otherwise.

4Mb RAM for < $400.  Not that bad.  Also, Pacific Page sells various
interface cards for it.

>A Postscript printer that I would recommend highly is GCC's BLP
>II, which comes with 2 Mb RAM expandable to 4 by adding off the shelf
>SIMMs, and it also has a SCSI port for adding a hard drive.  Best of all,
>it lists for under $2K.

This sounds pretty good.  Who is "GCC"?  What paper trays, interfaces,
print speed, etc. do you get for <$2000?

>Of course, if you have a cheap 20 Mb hard drive on your printer, you only
>need to download the fonts once <grin>.

True, but what's the price hit?  (Not a flame, just a question.)

>>The IIP and the Pacific Page cart support serial communications if you 
>>need to go this way with Amax.

Serial is nice for "tinkering" with the interpreter, too.  I have a
startup file that prints letterhead automatically on the first page,
graphics and all.

A IIP is limited by having only one cartridge slot, although with PS
I'm not sure you NEED another.  Might be nice to have HPGL.  But,
it is designed as a "Personal" laser printer.  It's easy to clean,
swap toner, etc., and HP's manuals are quite good.  Also, since there
is price competition on sales, and multi-vendor add-on support, you
might factor these into your decision.

Whatever you buy, I think your Amiga and PS will get along nicely.

Dan Taylor

> .18 by HYSTER::DEARBORN 

> My experience with it is that it uses the helvetica typeface for text.  It is
> a proportional typeface so some things that line up on screen may not line
> up in output.
>
> As for screen dumps, I have the resolution set to the lowest setting.  It 
> creates a beautiful halftone output.  The halftone even appears better than 
> the ones created in ProPage from IFF files.
>
> For text, I prefer to use the Laserjet driver.
>
> Randy

> .19 by SAUTER::SAUTER

>    In my system it prints as Courier.  I don't remember any switch to
>    control the font.  Perhaps we have different versions?  I've written
>    to the author asking if there is a later version, but I haven't
>    heard back from him yet.
>        John Sauter

Well in my system it is using Times-Roman.

I did a little snooping in the executable with NewZap, and find names for
both the Courier family and the Times family.  I wonder if it is sensitive
to either what is in the FONTS: directory or in the printer itself?  I have
both Times and Courier in my FONTS: directory, both with metric files; and
the printer I am using (ScriptPrinter) has both as well.

I have another problem as well: on each page I am getting a half truncated
first line, 63 good lines, and another half truncated lines.  I think I am
also loosing two lines, but I need to check that further.

I hope to sort this out - Randy can use the LaserJet driver, but a
ScriptPrinter ONLY does PS so that is not an option for me.  (My fallback
is an LA75.)

	Paul

Re: .29

I ran some more tests on the PostScript driver, with the following results:

- With the printer preferences paperlength set to 66, the driver tries
  to put 67 lines on the page.  However, at least on the ScriptPrinter
  I am using, the last half of #65 and all of 66 & 67 are lost, as is the
  first half of #1.

- Setting the paperlength to 63 causes the driver to attempt 64 lines
  on the page.  This is the most that fully fit.  Then only the first half
  of #1 is lost.

- The preferences left margin setting works more or less as intended.

- the preferences right margin setting seems to be ignored.  The whole line
  is output, and whatever doesn't fit is truncated.

- the preferences pitch setting changes the font size, roughly as expected,
  and the lines per inch setting changes the line spacing.

	Paul

Other problems with the postscript driver:

When using TransWrite by Gold Disk, Bold or Italic type prints twice on the 
same line.  

I'll stick to the Laserjet driver for text applications and use my postscript 
cartridge for postscript applications only.

Randy

    
    		A friend of mines company is selling the following
    	LaserPrinters.......
    
    			Manufacturer 	:QUME (?)
    			Model		:Crystal Print
    			Price(Uk Pounds):	
                        	WP+		400	(995)
    				Super Series    650	(1555)
    				Publisher II	850	(2555)
    
                    (ALL PRODUCTS ARE NEW BUT NOT ALL ARE IN BOXES)
    
    		There is quite a few of the WP+ but only 1 or 2 of the
    others left!I'm not sure how(if) to connect these to Amigas (etc),so 
    could someone provide the info !
    
    		If you want one ...you'd better hurry cos the companies
    will scrap them if not sold.
    
    			Mail Me If You're Interested.
    
    			Sonny Tanda @Wlc 
    			7852-4056.
    

After a several weeks I received the following reply from the Author of
PSDRIVER.  I verified that the Preferences Draft/Quality mode controls
whether Courier or Times font is used.  That fixes one of my problems with
the driver.  I still have a problem with the first line on each page being
half clipped because it is too near the edge of the paper.  I guess I'll
have to hang on and hope the next version is better.

	Paul

From:	DECWRL::"[email protected]" "Chris Nicotra"   27-JUN-1991 18:40:04.02
To:	<cimnet::kyzivat>
CC:
Subj:	Re: Amiga PostScript driver


Sorry it took me so long to reply, I don't get on CompuServe very
much.  The font selection is done based on the setting of Draft
or Quality output mode in Preferences.  I don't have a good fix for
you on the line problems, there is a much better version coming.
I will consider the !% kludge, I might make it so that there is
some way to turn it on and off.  If you want to reach me on
uunet my id is uunet!sundra!cgn.

-Chris
..


% ====== Internet headers and postmarks (see DECWRL::GATEWAY.DOC) ======
Received: by enet-gw.pa.dec.com; id AA22528; Thu, 27 Jun 91 15:17:29 -0700
Received: by tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.910620)
	id AA25848; Thu, 27 Jun 91 18:17:03 -0400
Date: 27 Jun 91 17:09:24 EDT
From: Chris Nicotra <[email protected]>
To: <cimnet::kyzivat>
Subject: Re: Amiga PostScript driver
Message-Id: <"910627210923 72466.765 EHB25-1"@CompuServe.COM>