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From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver
Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers
Subject: Glyph problems on the 8/300
Message-ID: <958@uw-beaver>
Date: Tue, 26-Mar-85 04:46:22 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.958
Posted: Tue Mar 26 04:46:22 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Mar-85 03:15:55 EST
Sender: daemon@uw-beaver
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 48

From: William LeFebvre <phil@rice.ARPA>

Background:
We have an Imagen 8/300 attached to our Ethernet and driven primarily
by a VAX 11/750 running the standard 4.2BSD spooling software.

I have been trying to print something with the amssmc40 font in TeX.
This font is a 40 point sans-serif font that is good for things like
name plates for office doors.  But, alas, when I try to print my first
name ("William"), the "W" comes out looking like something that is
almost, but not completely unlike a "W" (for non-Douglas Adams fans,
that statement implies that it looks like crap).  Further investigation
has shown that all previewers and font editors display the capital "W"
fine.  I had just assumed that the converter I was using ("iptex",
written by Chris Torek) just didn't know how to deal with a glyph that
large.

One of my office mates started investigating this problem last night.
He produced an imPRESS file from the appropriate portions of the iptex
distribution that prints a "W" in amssmc40.  Our imPRESS utilities say
this file looks just dandy.  The bitmap for the BGLY command comes out
as pretty as you please (rest easy Chris -- it wasn't your fault, and
sorry for not having faith in your code).  BUT, when we send this
imPRESS file to the printer, the capital "W" once again comes out
looking like something that is almost, but not completely unlike a "W".

Admittedly, this is the largest glyph that we have ever tried to print.
It is 139 pixels wide by 116 pixels high.  We have printed every
alphabetic character in amssmc40 and they all work fine, except for the
capital "W".

Has anyone seen this before, and is there any possible way to solve the
problem?  I would hate to have to change my name!  (I could use "Bill",
but that's boring and it doesn't really solve the problem.)  I have
found nothing in the imPRESS documentation that would indicate a limit
on the size of an individual glyph.  The only thing that comes close is
an upper bound on the total amount of memory that all downloaded glyphs
may consume.  But overloading this produces error messages, and nothing
that we have done that relates to this problem has produced error messages.

Just to make sure there is no communication breakdown:  this is NOT a
problem with TeX, the pxl files, or even iptex.  It appears that the
problem is with the Imagen 8/300 itself.

                                William LeFebvre
				Department of Computer Science
				Rice University
                                <phil@Rice.arpa>