Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ukma!rutgers!att!ulysses!sfsup!kd
From: kd@sfsup.UUCP (K.Delbarre)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: cheap good printers
Summary: DataPak driver may work with other font cartridges
Message-ID: <4784@sfsup.UUCP>
Date: 9 Feb 89 22:27:58 GMT
References: <17924@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU>
Organization: AT&T-BL, Summit N.J. USA 07901
Lines: 38

In article <17924@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU>, pv9y@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU writes:
> For those who are looking for a good quality, cheap printer for the Mac, but
> but aren't afraid to be a little odd, I would recommend the HP DeskJet.
> [ ... ]
> Drivers:  There are two major ones, the Printer Interface III from DataPak
> and the Grappler LQ from Orange Micro.  I tested both.  The speed is almost
> [ ... ]
> the DataPak does not work with ALL the cartridges, most notably not with the
> cartridge that gives you 3 or 4 sizes.  [ ... ]

Some time ago I played with a friend's DeskJet and Printer Interface II,
which I assume is the previous release of PI III.  As distributed, it did
not work with the "TmsRmn ASCII" and "Helvetica ASCII" font cartridges,
but ResEdit showed the reason.  PI II contained a list of string
resources that told it how to select font cartridges on the DeskJet
based on the name and point size of the font(s) in your document.
I think (based on fairly old memories) that the name of the resource
was the font name concatenated with the size, and the contents of the
resource was a string containing the escape sequence(s) to send to
select the appropriate cartridge, font size, etc.   As distributed,
it was configured so that any size of Times would select the
"TmsRmn" cartridge -- which as you noted only contains one or
two font sizes.  Using ResEdit, I set up its list of resources
so that it would select the "TmsRmn ASCII" cartridge instead,
and it worked just fine.  This cartridge contains 8 font sizes,
but only has the ASCII character set.  If you use any weird and
wonderful Mac characters they're essentially truncated to seven bits
and you get what you get.

I don't know if Printer Interface III retains this mapping scheme,
but if you go in with ResEdit it'll be fairly obvious.
I was thinking of buying PI III myself (anybody know
a discount mail-order place that carries it?) but now that second-
-generation drivers with outline fonts are coming out, I may hold
out a while longer.

Kelvin Delbarre, AT&T Bell Labs, Summit, NJ
attunix!kd