laser-lovers@uw-beaver (11/04/85)
From: "Roger C. King" <RCKing@MIT-MULTICS.arpa> This is mildly ecstatic short review of the above combination when used with an IBM AT. I have been beta testing for some time XyQuest's XyWrite III <to be released about 15 Nov., but don't hold me to it> in combination with an Apple LaserWriter. XyWrite III supports any proportional font you can describe in a font width table, and as such supports all the internal Helvetica, Times Roman, Greek, and Courier fonts in the Apple LaserWriter. At this point in time, and probably at release, the user must insert his/her own PostScript code into a *.PRN file which XyWRite uses. Once this is done, the results are very impressive since any font can be scaled to any size without any loss of detail. (even one letter per page!) Viewgraphs can be made directly on transparency as with all Canon engine machines. Also, any PostScript code describing any graphics/text image can be inserted into documents for printing on output. Now enters Digital Research's Gem Draw. At Adobe's suggestion, I sought out a copy of Gem Desktop version 1.2 which supports PostScript on the Apple LaserWriter. This was not easy. It seems that DR has continued shipping desktop version 1.0 for sometime, and it is impossible to tell from the box what version of the desktop is inside. For example, we finally found 1.2 Desktop in a version 1.0 Gem Collection which includes the Desktop, Gem Write, and Gem Paint, but not Gem Draw which had to be purchased separately. Having finally got all the pieces, I found Gem Draw capable of producing phenomenal images on the LaserWriter. Full 300x300 dot per inch output is possible EVEN THOUGH I GET ONLY 200 by 640 in CGA emulation on my Professional Graphics monitor. To say this another way, Gem Draw Draw is not a 'what-you-see is what-you-get' product, but more accurately a 'what-you-get is MORE than what-you-see' product. It keeps internal all line, box, shading, curve, etc. images as high level descriptions, then describes these to the LaserWriter in PostSCript, not as a bit map, and then the LaserWriter does the raster-scan conversion to dots after the image elements have all been described. Gem paint, on the other hand, must send a bit map to the LaserWriter which is them limited in resolution to what-you-see is what-you-get. Gem Desktop 1.2 also fully supports the EGA. Although the interface to the LaserWriter is a 9600 serial connection, the largest delay is in the computations that have to take place in the LaserWriter to put the high level image descriptions down on paper. The longest delay I typically experience is a minute or so, with 20 or 30 seconds typical of word processing documents. I am told that some of the same images require 10 or 15 minutes each to print on an Epson. Recall that a LaserWriter has a 68000, 1.5 Meg RAM, 0.5 Meg ROM, and a 12 MHZ clock. The only major outstanding problem with the LaserWriter/PC interface is the lack of XON/XOFF support on the PC side, and the lack of any other support on the LaserWriter side. Gem Desk 1.2 provides background spooling and XON/XOFF support, but XyWrite III does not currently support XON/XOFF. There are, however, a number of communications software packages that do provide XON/XOFF which can be used to send XyWrite III files to the LaserWriter. I expect to see XON/XOFF support directly from XyQuest sometime in the near future, but I do not speak for XyQuest, (or Adobe, or DR). I have one question. Being new to Gem Desk, I would appreciate it if someone could point out a technique for spooling the raw printer output from Gem Draw into a file so that I could then imbed the PostScript code directly into my XyWrite Documents for more direct integration. Roger King MIT Lincoln Laboratory