Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!zog.cs.cmu.edu!tgl From: tgl@zog.cs.cmu.edu.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Using a non-ImageWriter printer with a Mac (long) Message-ID: <1022@zog.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Sat, 18-Apr-87 12:11:13 EST Article-I.D.: zog.1022 Posted: Sat Apr 18 12:11:13 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 02:11:45 EST Reply-To: tgl@zog.cs.cmu.edu (Tom Lane) Distribution: na Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 74 Summary: It works, but... >Question: How easy is it to use a non-ImageWriter printer to a Macintosh? I have an HP LaserJet Plus running with my Mac. I use Softstyle's Laserstart printer driver; Softstyle also makes drivers for Epson and other printers. The rest of this note describes my experience with the Laserstart driver; you can probably extrapolate some of this to their other drivers. (I don't know if anyone else writes Mac printer drivers; the information required is *not* present in Inside Mac, though I've heard that it was published in the original "Phone Book" edition.) The results are mixed. It *works*, but there are some annoying properties. The primary thing you have to accept is that what you have is an Imagewriter emulator, i.e. you get either 75 or 150 dpi resolution; you don't get to take advantage of the printer's 300 dpi capability. In particular, any program that has LaserWriter-specific features doesn't function, because the LaserJet doesn't understand PostScript. For example, SuperPaint prints just fine in Imagewriter resolutions, but you can't use its "LaserBits" 300-dpi feature. Also, certain programs tend to do things that are appropriate for the Imagewriter but not for the pseudo-Imagewriter LaserJet. SuperPaint insists on initializing each new document with a Page Setup record that specifies "Tall Adjusted" mode; you have to explicitly go in and change that to "Tall" mode to get reasonable behavior with the LJ. I've noticed that MacWrite sometimes moves page breaks when you tell it to print, though I can't be sure that this is the fault of the printer. The printer driver has a special "text" print mode in which it just sends ASCII (not bitmaps) to the printer, relying on fonts present in the printer. This gives you effectively 300 dpi for text only, and is very fast; but it is inherently not WYSIWYG, since the Mac's screen fonts don't quite match the spacing of the LaserJet's fonts. I tried making a program to download a Mac font as a LaserJet soft font, and *still* could not get the spacing to match exactly; the LaserJet's treatment of spacing just isn't the same as Quickdraw's. (The results would be satisfactory for ragged-right-margin documents, but I wanted justified margins, and the printed right margin was visibly irregular.) Eventually I gave up on the text mode; now I just use the bitmap modes, which at least produce output that looks like what's on the screen. (I also recall suffering a system crash when I tried to print a Finder Catalog in text mode, which further soured me on the text mode. That's the only major bug that I've found, though.) Another complaint is that it's ungodly slow; over 30 sec/page in 75 dpi resolution, 2 or 3 minutes/page at 150 dpi. Part of this is simply that you have to ship a lot of dots down a 19200 baud serial line; but I also found that Softstyle did some extremely dumb things in the printer driver. (Example: sending a printer reset command at the top of each page. This is unnecessary, and it stops the LJ dead in its tracks for about 10 seconds. Also, some of the inner loops in the driver, executed once *per bit* of image, were incredibly inefficient; would you believe dozens of NOP instructions?) I modified the driver a little bit to get rid of some of the stupidities, and it now runs significantly quicker; but it will never be able to run at the LJ's rated speed of 8 sec/page. On the other hand, I hear that LaserWriters don't run at 8 sec/page either. Recently Softstyle has been advertising an upgraded "Laserstart Plus", which does print spooling among other things. I don't have that, so can't say if it's worth the extra money, nor if it fixes any of my complaints. The bottom line: you can do it, and it works, but you have to live with being outside the design center. That means coping with various peculiarities and perhaps not being able to run some programs. In my case it is worthwhile 'cause I already had the LJ; if I were buying a printer for the Mac, I would definitely spend the extra money for an Apple-blessed printer. tom lane ----- ARPA: lane@ZOG.CS.CMU.EDU UUCP: ...!seismo!zog.cs.cmu.edu!lane BITNET: lane%zog.cs.cmu.edu@cmuccvma