Laser Printer for a Small Network of Suns?

[John Eadie]

In article <302 at brazos.Rice.edu> attcan!utzoo!henry at uunet.uu.net (Henry Spencer) writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 79, message 2 of 15
>
>>|[HP LaserJets] You do need suitable software; they trade off
>>|hardware smarts for cost, and so the host has to supply the intelligence.
>>|If you are doing serious graphics or are prone to the "ransom note" style
>>                                                          ^^^^^
>>|of typography, however, you definitely want a PostScript printer...
>>
>>Yeah.  PostScript is necessary here and there.  If you're using different
>>fonts of the same typeface, say.  Or perhaps EVEN, yes, using more than
>>one typeface, or, making the face fit the the job, kerning with care,
>>trying to communicate with emphasis and clarity .. that is to say, where
>>one is concerned about GOOD Typography.
>
>Nonsense.  A LaserJet Plus will put any character you want anywhere you
>want it.  In different fonts of the same typeface, in multiple typefaces,
>with well-chosen faces, kerned, emphasized, and clearly.  Your software
>has to supply the characters, and tell the printer exactly what to do --
>as I said, there's a tradeoff involved -- but the printer will do it.  You
>run into limitations when you're trying to use lots of different fonts
>(i.e. the Macintosh "ransom note" style, changing fonts with wild abandon
>and no concern for how ugly the result looks), and the less said about
>graphics the better, but for typesetting normal text it works fine.
>
>It's amazing how many people think that typesetting began with PostScript.

And what kind of software does this?  Is it your assembly code?  Does it
resemble the proprietary coding that used to drive Xenotron, Monotype,
Linotron, Compugraphic typesetters?  (All of whom now offer PostScript.)
How many applications on the Sun drive the LaserJet this well?  What's the
language?

PostScript has goosed the old time typesetting industry into using modern
computing practices.  PostScript is portable, has tons of applications on
many platforms using it as output, and does graphics.  BTW, Graphics!

A PostScript printer will therefore continue be useful in the future,
since it prints / proofs the standard page description language.  You can
save money on laser printers, but I wouldn't buy one that can't interpret
PostScript.  Unless I have one really dear HP laserjet application.

John

John Eadie  Computing Art Inc  (416) 536-9951  
E-Mail: jae at c-art.UUCP | {uunet,suncan}!c-art!jae | sun!jeadie

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of suffering softened by the ripples of water, was framed in trees
and blue sky' .. Georg Cristoph Lictenberg