Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!c152-cb
From: c152-cb@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Vince Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Dpaint fonts...
Message-ID: <11598@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 29 Mar 89 19:38:49 GMT
References: <13835@gryphon.COM> <7564@super.ORG>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: c152-cb@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Vince Lee)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 42

In article <7564@super.ORG> rminnich@super.UUCP (Ronald G Minnich) writes:
>IFF2PS can't drive a paintjet. iff2ps doesn't come with Deluxe Paint. 
>It seems that every solution I have seen to using deluxe paint involves
>hunting around for some public domain goodie and and hoping that 
>somehow you can get printed output that looks like something. 
>Tell me what you will, but MacPaint output to an Imagewriter looks
>better than DeluxePaint to almost anything- unless you are willing
>to do a *lot* of screwing around. Why is this? I dunno. Why is this
>after *3 years*? I dunno. I think it is your fault. :-)

I think you're confused about why dpaint output looks so bad.  IFF2PS will
do abolutely nothing to improve the print quality.  The problem lies in the
fact that you can't generate information where ne exists!  Dpaint is a
pixel paint program.  No more information exists other than what you see
on the screen.  When you draw a line, it is stored as pixels;  its identidy
as a line is lost..  Thus, the only thing iff2ps can do is translate the 
iff bitmap to a postscript-format bitmap--Your lines won't look sharper,
your text won't be any more readable.

The macintosh screen resolution is smaller than the Amigas. Thus, dpaint
pictures SHOULD look better than macpaint.  They usually don't.  Why?

1) Bad fonts.  The standard Amiga fonts are a joke.  Try getting some good
public domain fonts, or better yet, get a collection of mac fonts translated
to amiga format.

2) The imagewriter resolution is keyed to be an integer multiple of the
screen resolution (i think).  This makes an ENORMOUS difference for text
or pixel-thin lines.  Since the amiga has no STANDARD printer (ie you get
a choice) the printer device does fractional scaling to fit your picture
on the page.  To overcome this, go into 1.3 prefs and set scaling to an
integer multiple before printing.  I use 2-1 when printing a hires screen
to my paintjet.  You probably want smoothing on too.  The difference is like
night and day.  The picture will be a little smaller than full page, but you
can increase your page size to compensate.

Hope this helps.  There is no reason why dpaint output should be any worse
than macpaint, since they face the same constraints to print quality:  you
can't print information that doesn't exist.  In Hires, the amiga has more
information...in color, even more!

-vince