laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (12/05/84)
From: Charles Hedrick <HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA> While the X9700 may have been marketed at one time as a lineprinter replacement, it is certainly far more capable than that. Scribe supports it very nicely. We understand that TeX does also, but in order to get the TeX driver, you need a license from Xerox to know some secrets about the 9700 software. We haven't been able to get that yet. Several companies make graphics packages of different sorts. I certainly would not want to make a wholehearted endorsement of the 9700, because it seems to break a bit more often than we would like, and using all of the nifty features may take some work. But if you are willing to spool your Scribe output to tape, I believe it is fairly easy to use Scribe with a 9700. And if you have a properly trained staff operating it, your maintenance situation would probably be better than ours also. (Let me repeat my caution that the 9700 should be viewed as a mainframe, and should have appropriate operations and support staff assigned to it.) Our problems have come largely because - we want to use it online, and we do not want human intervention in going back and forth between normal lineprinter simulation and Scribe output. - we use untrained student operations The 9700 does do a reasonable job of combining flexible xerography with a design intended for high-speed production work. -------