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From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver
Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers
Subject: LaserWriter output quality, a review
Message-ID: <1075@uw-beaver>
Date: Wed, 24-Apr-85 15:55:53 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.1075
Posted: Wed Apr 24 15:55:53 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Apr-85 08:10:59 EST
Sender: daemon@uw-beaver
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
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From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@uw-beaver.arpa

Brian Reid very kindly sent me a bunch of samples of LaserWriter output,
partly for comparison with the LaserJet stuff I've got here.

The graphics are very nice, and it's obvious that Brian is having fun.
(Example:  a record label with the lettering in a nice circular arc.)
As I've said elsewhere, Apple's attempt to break into the toy market
is clearly succeeding -- first the Mac and now this.

I'm afraid I'm not so impressed with the text.  It confirms my previous
impression of Adobe's font scaling:  no, Adobe has *not* found a magic
alternative to bit-tuned masters for each point size.  It's better than
one would expect, but visibly imperfect.  Letter spacings are uneven, to
the point where letters sometimes touch, and there are seemingly-pointless
variations in spacing between similar characters.  The fonts themselves
definitely look like they could benefit from bit-tuning, although I am
not enough of a font guru to have a trained eye for this.

Lest I give the wrong impression, I should add that it *is* better than
I would have expected from a font-scaling scheme.  Adobe clearly has a
lot on the ball; it is no slur on them that they haven't *completely*
solved a nearly-impossible problem.  They've come closer than I would
have thought possible.

Compared to the LaserJet...  Apples and oranges.  The LaserJet's letter
shapes are magnificent, although HP botched the spacing to the point
where any self-respecting typesetting package has to position almost
everything explicitly.  Given this, the LaserJet does a superior job on
ordinary text in 10-point Times Roman (oops, I mean Tms Rmn [ugh]).
When the fonts and/or symbology gets hairy, or graphics becomes an issue,
then the LaserJet bows out and leaves the field to the LaserWriter.