Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!chinacat!woody From: woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: Summary of responses about low-end Postscript printers Summary: find out if it is black or white writer Message-ID: <2000@chinacat.Unicom.COM> Date: 13 May 91 04:44:45 GMT References: <13530@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Followup-To: comp.lang.postscript Organization: a guest of Unicom Systems Development, Austin Lines: 41 In article <13530@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>, oliver@fire.berkeley.edu writes: > About a week ago, I posted a question asking about low-end Postscript > printers. I was particularly curious about the QMS PS410, the TI > MicroLaser, and the Printer Works JetScript/Canon engine combination. > > > So, I'm still not quite sure whether to get the TI or the QMS. I'm leaning > towards the former because it is small and a bit cheaper, but I have been > left with a very good impression of the 410 and I may go ahead and spring I think that I'd ask whether the TI is a black or white writer. The 410, I belive is a black writer. The diffrence in output is subtle, but important. A blackwriter generates black dots everywhere the laser hits the drum. The normal unexposed drum will generate a white page. The whitewriter on the other hand REMOVES toner everywhere the beam touches the drum. Now, since lasers are essentialy round rather than ssquare pixels, you have to somehow fint a round dot in a square (1/300th inch) spot. There are 3 ways to do this. 1. Make the dot stay within the bounds of the square pixel. Draw a box, with a dot in it that just touches the inside edges of the box. 2. expand the dot a bit, so that it stays INSIDE the box at the corners, but bulges outside of the box at the 4 edges. 3. Encompass the entire box with the dot. Most blackwriters use number 2 and adjust the toner, charge, and laser such that the small unexposed diamonds between the dots will fill in anyway. (draw 4 circles so the edges all touch, and you will see the diamond that I am talking about here. This will not work with a white writer. You wind up with little thin black lines etc over your page. For a white writer, you have to use option number 3. This has the effect that a single row of pixels will have nibbles taken out of the side. You can get some graph paper and prove this quite easily. The bottom line, is that a whitewriter tends to have intense solid blacks, but often times single pixels won't image properly. 3, 4 or 5 point type for example, TImes-Roman wiil have open spaces at the top and bottom of things like o's and e's. In general, for find detail you want one of the blackwriters. If you are going to be doing something like creating silkscreen masks, where the screen is say 150 mesh, then the loss of fine resolution won't matter, because you need the solid blacks more than the resolution. Cheers Woody