Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site uw-beaver Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!laser-lovers From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers Subject: More news on Postscript printers Message-ID: <526@uw-beaver> Date: Thu, 24-Jan-85 21:20:37 EST Article-I.D.: uw-beave.526 Posted: Thu Jan 24 21:20:37 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jan-85 09:42:20 EST Sender: daemon@uw-beaver Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 60 From: Richard Furuta I called Adobe this afternoon to try and get the current word on Postscript and Postscript-related products. I spoke with Rob Auster there. Adobe is announcing today at Uniform a software product called transcript. This is a 4.2 bsd Unix program that translates from various other formats into Postscript and that drives the printer. It accepts output produced by ditroff, troff (CAT/GSI format), chart (whatever that is), and postscript files produced by other sources. It will also accept Diablo 630 format files and simple text. Transcript drives the printer over a RS232 link and handles error status, accounting, and other details. The cost is $495 for binary and $1795 for source. Adobe, itself, is marketing this. Unilogic is providing Scribe support for Postscript (and note again that transcript handles the troff CAT/GSI format which Scribe also produces). TeX support is being prepared by Textset (more on this later). QMS is supposed to be shipping their 1200A although they haven't announced it yet. This is the QMS 1200 with Adobe's interface rather than with the QMS interface. (The 1200 is based on the Xerox XP-12 print engine.) It is supposed to be "completely compatible" with the Apple printer in terms of what it'll accept. An Adobe interface to some Merganthaler phototypesetters is scheduled for announcement tomorrow. This provides printers with 600dpi, 1200dpi, and 2500dpi resolutions. The claim is that by the end of the year there will be a range of Adobe products offering a variety of speeds, duty cycles, and resolutions. A number of further sets of Merganthaler fonts are scheduled for release through the year. The plan is that Apple will make them available on a Macintosh disk for a price in the $80 to $100 range. The disk will contain Macintosh screen fonts plus fonts for the printer. The printer's fonts will be downloaded into a 128 K buffer that has been reserved in the printer. The Apple printer has a switch on the side that selects the hardware interface. Available are AppleTalk (the Apple network), two RS232 interfaces (1200 baud and 9600 baud), and a straight Diablo interface. The Postscript manual is available from Adobe for $30. I also spoke with Jim Sterken of Textset. Textset has previously produced a TeX port on the Sun terminal and also an APS DVI device driver that runs on a number of operating systems (VMS, IBM CMS, IBM VM, Tops-20, Sun 4.2, and Apollo.) Sterken is in the middle of developing a DVI driver to Postscript. The plan here is that Adobe will put the CM fonts into the printer. Some of the final form of the driver will depend on whether all the CM fonts will fit or not. The goal is to have the driver ready for distribution by the time that the Apple printers become available in March. They haven't figured out how the marketing will be handled yet but the guess is that the cost will be in the $500 to $1000 range. The software is being developed on a Sun in WEB and it's expected that the software will be supported on a similar set of operating systems to that that they support for the APS. That's it for now. Anyone have additional information? --Rick -------