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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!agate!bionet!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uwmcsd1!marque!gryphon!richard
From: richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript,comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: Publishing laserset material (was: Re: I need a finer setgray)
Message-ID: <10844@gryphon.COM>
Date: 17 Jan 89 05:04:04 GMT
References: <10322@gryphon.COM> <88@sopwith.UUCP>
Reply-To: richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton)
Distribution: na
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 59

In article <88@sopwith.UUCP> snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy) writes:
I wrote:
>|
>|
>|I'm getting real tired of seeing books, forms, and ad's in magazines
>|set with a laser printer instead of a phototypesetter.
>|
>|
>|I can't help but feel that we're making negative progress here.
>
>What is happening is that the range of reproduction quality is getting
>compressed towards the middle.  I am happy to see less memeograph (sp?)
>and draft quality dot matrix output.

I was talking about books, costing non-trivial amounts of money
purchased in bok stores. I've never seen bot-matrix stuff there
except for mauals accompanying software packages.

>I don't think the laserprinters themselves are necessarily to blame for
>the cases of lowered quality.  Sometimes the software driving them doesn't
>take advantage of the resolution available.

Huh ?  300 dpi is 300 dpi.

>                                              Sometimes an advertiser will
>*want* an obviously low resolution output to make it look more "computery"
>to an audience used to associating very low resolution with computers.
>(No one ever accused advertisers of having taste.) 

Sure. I have no problems with this. I'm quite used to seeing examples
set in Courier. But I'd expect it to be crisp and sharp (ie, 1200 dpi)
not laserish, of it's in a halfway expensize book.

I've even seen a few ads in magazines that were *quite obviously*
laserset. Impresive. Not in a positive sense.

>                                                 And I have to wonder
>if the reproduction stage(s) after the laserprinter retain what quality
>the laserprinter does generate.  A friend of mine has a 300dpi laserprinter
>that generates beautiful output.  Run this through a photocopy machine,
>(even a big Kodak one, which has been the best I've found) and it looks
>pretty sad.

Gawd does my milage vary.

I think my laserprinter generates good, not beautiful output.

Phototypesetter output on resin coated paper, is beautiful.

And I've seen photocopy machines (Canon) that yielded better
copied than the original; they *appeared* to perform some
sort of low pass filter.

To summarize: laserset output, in place of typesetter output, looks
cheap.

-- 
   ``In a few years, the only thing that will be made in America is a deal''
richard@gryphon.COM   {...}!gryphon!richard   gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov