Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!husc6!rice!sun-spots-request
From: attcan!utzoo!henry@uunet.uu.net (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Laser Printer for a Small Network of Suns?
Keywords: Software
Message-ID: <302@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 22 Jul 89 03:37:52 GMT
Sender: root@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
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Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
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.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu