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From: DRF@SU-SCORE.ARPA (David Fuchs)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.laser-printers
Subject: Printing DVI on a Xerox 2700
Message-ID: <12175361911.19.DRF@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 15-Jan-86 02:40:30 EST
Article-I.D.: SU-SCORE.12175361911.19.DRF
Posted: Wed Jan 15 02:40:30 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Jan-86 01:42:41 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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Approved: laser-lovers@washington.arpa

The Xerox 2700 is a well-known disaster area.  It is unusable as
anything other than a line-printer or daisy-wheel replacement.  If
whoever sold it to you represented it as otherwise, perhaps you can
get them to give you a refund if you threaten to sue for fraud.  The
only thing more amazing than the fact that it was ever marketed is
that many people actually purchased the thing.

Specifically, the main problems are:

1) Xerox does not provide users with the font format, so to download
   fonts requires reverse-engineering the thing.  But even if you do...

2) There's not enough room to hold as many different characters as you
   would typically find in a reasonable mix of jobs, but that doesn't
   even matter, because...

3) There isn't enough flexibility in the control electronics to place
   characters where you want them on the page if you're doing anything
   so common as trying to have a different amount of space between
   words on different lines of text.

No other laser printer that costs even half as much has any of these
problems, except the DEC LN01, which is actually (almost) the same
machine.  (In fact, I am aware of LN01 users that DEC has offered
refunds to; DEC's LN03 machine is ok.)

	-david "who is frustrated by the number of people who call up
		and say `We just got our 2700, now how do we get TeX
		output?' and has to gently tell them they're fools."
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