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From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver
Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers
Subject: Re: LaserWriter output quality, a review
Message-ID: <1090@uw-beaver>
Date: Fri, 26-Apr-85 01:37:22 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.1090
Posted: Fri Apr 26 01:37:22 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Apr-85 04:43:41 EST
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Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
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From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@uw-beaver.arpa

Much of Brian's output was indeed graphics rather than text; I should
have made this clearer.  Pretty damn good graphics, too.

But there were some modest chunks of text, including a lengthy quote
from Daniel Berkeley Updike.  He didn't actually send me the organized-
crime 1040, or if he did it's gotten lost.  (I think I have seen it
elsewhere, though.)  The Updike quote was in what looked like quite an
ordinary text font (I am not enough of a font guru to identify it by
sight, and it's not labelled), and by Ghod the letters sometimes touch!
Check out lowercase r followed by lowercase i or y, and lowercase t
followed by lowercase y.  Some of these pairs, interestingly enough,
touch sometimes and not other times.  Some other pairs are usually so
close, due to the uneven spacing I mentioned, that they *look* like
they touch unless you dig out the magnifier.  The spacing really
could stand some work; it's the biggest flaw in the output.

I should probably send Brian some LaserJet samples.

I agree wholeheartedly that a side-by-side comparison in a well-printed
journal would be superior to a handful of personal opinions, and
would also be interested in seeing commentary by professional graphic-
arts people.
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry

[[Editor's comment: I usually refrain from commenting on either
Brian's or Henry's contributions to this forum since they are almost
uniformly fun to read.  However, it seems to me quite unclear what is
really being discussed in this most recent exchange of messages about
the relative merits of the LaserWriter and the LaserJet.  In the
earlier message, Henry commented that the letter shapes produced by
the LaserWriter looked a little off to him, but that as he was not a
font designer, he couldn't say for sure.  More definitive comment on
this by a person with training as a font designer would be very
interesting to me, and I believe others.  Unless the fonts were loaded
into the LaserWriter as bits (highly unlikely), that is also a
technical issue of interest.  The rest of the previous message (and
the topic of this message) concern Henry's comments that the letter
spacing in Brian's sample printout could be better.  The implications
of this are uncertain to me.  To know whether this is a reflection on
the LaserWriter, we have to know how Brian produced the sheet.
Perhaps this is a failure in the LaserWriter, or perhaps it is a
failure in the text formatter Brian (or Adobe) uses, or perhaps this
is a failure in the width tables used by the text formatter.

I'd also be interested in hearing what the limitations are of the
troff LaserJet software that Henry uses.  I've also seen the sample
sheets from Textware's Tplus and they are indeed nice.  However, I
have the strong impression that if, for example, I wanted to increase
the size of the body type by just a little bit, I'd be in trouble.
After all, there are only a limited number of point sizes available in
the LaserJet's font cartridge and it isn't possible to print more than
a quarter page at full resolution in bit map mode.		--Rick]]