Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!pprg.unm.edu!unmvax!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!rutgers!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!att!mtuxo!lzfme!jwi From: jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop Subject: Re: ventura Summary: Get real printing from 300 x 300 dpi Keywords: ventura,xt Message-ID: <1312@lzfme.att.com> Date: 4 May 89 20:04:29 GMT References: <629@eeg.UUCP> <2008@trantor.harris-atd.com> <3719@nunki.usc.edu> <8397@ihlpf.ATT.COM> Distribution: usa Organization: AT&T, Lincroft NJ Lines: 62 In article <8397@ihlpf.ATT.COM>, cem@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Malloy) writes: > > [lots of things deleted] > > > After 90 minutes, we pulled camera-ready pages out of our > > LaserWriter, and walked them over to the print center. > > Camera-ready pages? From a 300x300 D.P.I printer? Get real. No > real printer in this country considers a 300x300 D.P.I Laser Printer > camera-ready. It's good enough for in-house repro junk, but a Printer > will not except anything less than 600x600 D.P.I. to produce decent > quality. 300 x 300 dpi is quite adequate for printing if you use 12 point type and larger, particularly in the highly legible type famlies. For example, New Century Schoolbook or Bookman with Avant Garde or Helvetica in normal postscript output. Alternately, Lucida, Lucida Sans, Charter, and the Stone famlies can be used in even smaller sizes with good reproduction. The basic problem comes with the insistance of 10 point Times Roman with a 6.5 inch justified line length. This was the standard used with troff for typesetting. At 300 x 300, Times Roman looks terrible. And a line length of 6.5 inches makes it unreadable even when typeset. The maximum line length for easy readability should be 1-1/2 to 2 lower case alphabets or 39 to 52 characters. It is also easier to read ragged right than justified. So, if you start out with a type face that reproduces poorly at 300 x 300, make the size too small, make the lines too long, and generally do everything you can to make your text unreadable, you can expect poor results. I understand that Psychology Today did a survey on written communication a few years ago that showed people thought the same subject presented in a more obtuse style was more significant -- if it was easy to read, it couldn't be important. For those who are serious about reproduction, create your pages oversize at about 129% (for 5-1/2by 8-1/2 pages) and then have them reduced to 77% when the plates are made. This increases your resolution to about 400 x 400 with virtually no cost. For those who are serious about communicating, use legible type families, larger type, correct length lines, and ragged right. As a final comment, I have noticed that there aren't any real small printers left in this country, only franchise operations. They not only don't nkow how to adjust their presses, they are also giving out bad advice about desktop publishing. So, if you want a real printer, I suggest that you find a web operator and print a minimum of 100,000 copies. For short run, you're better off on an office copier than with almost any local press operator. (My appologies to the NJ Association of Quick Printers :-)) Jim Winer ..!lzfme!jwi I believe in absolute freedom of the press. I believe that freedom of the press is the only protection we have from the abuses of power of the church, from the abuses of power of the state, from the abuses of power of the corporate body, and from the abuses of power of the press itself. Those persons who advocate censorship offend my religion.