Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!haven!ncifcrf!lhc!mimsy!mojo!disney!josip From: josip@ra.src.umd.edu (Josip Loncaric) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware Subject: Re: Using HP Lasers with Mac? Message-ID: <1990Sep19.141200.12661@ra.src.umd.edu> Date: 19 Sep 90 14:12:00 GMT References: <1990Sep19.095632.2860@csc.anu.oz.au> Sender: news@ra.src.umd.edu (The News System) Organization: Systems Research Center, University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 37 In article <1990Sep19.095632.2860@csc.anu.oz.au> pfr654@csc.anu.oz.au writes: >Using HP LaserPrinters with the Mac > >I am aware that one can use MacPrint, or JetLink Express with these >printers, BUT I haven't heard that they are particularly quick. > >Is there any way, including going the postscript upgrade path, that will >allow me to print at a reasonable speed (say 1ppm) ... I've used LaserJet Express driver v1.2 (by GDT Softworks) on a Mac II driving a LaserJet III printer over 19200 baud serial line. You DO seem to get about 1ppm printing pages full of typeset text. While this is OK for a few pages, printing 100+ page books gets boring very quickly. Note that the same printer can print the same document at almost 8ppm when driven from a UNIX workstation. My guess is that the JLE driver uses QuickDraw to image a page to an off-screen bitmap which is then compressed and sent to the printer. UNIX drivers download fonts instead and use them. There is also a font limitation which dates back to the original Macintosh: bitmapped fonts can be at most 127 pixels high (in my experience). This is only about 30 pts when printed... so you cannot use large bitmapped fonts... use ATM or wait for TrueType... in summary, QuickDraw-based printer drivers have all of the limitations of QuickDraw... A solution may be to get a PostScript+AppleTalk upgrade for LJ3 from HP. See recent MacWorld (October '90?) for a review of this - they say the 68000 processor in LJ3 runs at 10MHz, which is slower than the LaserWriters. I think they have not tested HP's PostScript cartridge, though, they have probably used Pacific cartridge (a PostScript clone). -- Josip Loncaric / SRC / U. of Maryland / -------------------------------------------------------------- ! Today's Special: Opinions....$0.02 each ! --------------------------------------------------------------