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From: chuq@sun.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: dumb vs. smart laser printers
Message-ID: <27692@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 10-Sep-87 17:01:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.27692
Posted: Thu Sep 10 17:01:53 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 10:44:10 EDT
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Approved: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com

>The cheap, fast printers with the simple page description languages can
>generally perform all the desktop publishing needs of a typical user.

>Never in my experience have I ever wanted to, or heard of anybody wanting
>to put a full page of high resolution graphics out to a laser printer for
>desktop publishing purposes.

I'll disagree with this rather strongly. One very important thing that dumb
laser printers don't supply is the ability to move to a typesetter when you
want to. Even excluding high resolution graphics, there are a LOT of graphic
items that are used in a good design (dingbats, bars, boxes, grey backing
plates, etc...). If you create them as bitmaps for a laserprinter, when you
try to send that to a typesetter (assuming you can find one that supports
the rest of the data) you still have low resolution bitmaps -- that look
very out of place. 

On the other hand, if you put those graphic items together using Postscript
and run them on a laserwriter, when you move the output to a Postscript
typesetter, the resolution of those items increases to the natural
resolution of the typesetter, making them look much cleaner and like they
belong there.

The alternative for a dumb laser printer is to use it only for the text and
paste in all of the graphic items by hand -- which removes most of the
advantages of going to DTP technology in the first place.

Even if you don't (or won't, like me) use a scanner for artwork, there are
enough graphic items used in desktop publishing that the smarter and
typesetter compatible printers are a necessity. I'd cringe to think of doing
OtherRealms by typesetting the text and pasting everything in by hand -- I'd
NEVER meet a schedule that way.

chuq
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Chuq Von Rospach	chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ

We live and learn, but not the wiser grow -- John Pomfret (1667-1703)