laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (11/01/84)
From: muddcs!barry@uw-beaver.arpa (Barry Lustig)
I posting this article for a friend of mine who is not yet on the net.
You can send any replies directly to him at the address on the bottom
of the article or post them to laser-lovers (I forward all of the articles
to him through mail).
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Hi laser-lovers,
I really could use some basic information. I am looking to get a laser
printer to run on a 68000/Q-Bus Unix system, need to know what in heck
which does what. Besides a neat & fast ascii printer, we need to be
able to do graphics and troff-ing at reasonable speed (increadible speed
not needed). Right now we have tweaked the Versatek interface to talk
to a C.Itoh matrix lineprinter, which works, but only has 144 dot/inch
and is really, really slow. Part of our problem may be that we're
working over a 9600 baud serial line. We're open to any suggestions;
here are the questions:
1) Will the less expensive laser printers work? What can the expensive
ones (eg CANON) do that the cheaper ones (eg HP) can't?
2) What's the deal on fonts? Are the printers restricted to certain
fonts that come in cartridges? What's a font cartridge?? I don't suppose
that they match up with the UCB digital fonts that we're using.
3) Real basic question: When running typeset-simulation output, do you
pass the printer ascii characters OR the bit image that you want? Seems
that sending ascii directly would be mucho faster, no? But then how
does the vtroff/printer interaction work? Do you write a vtroff font
information file for the printer's font?
4) Same question for graphics: To print an arbitrary line (my
definition of graphics) do you send endpoints (fast) or the bit image?
5) The global question: Is the laser printer a great idea, that is,
do you use it as your primary printer and graphics output device?
I'd love to forget all about plotters and matrix printers...
6) The bottom line: What specific printers do you recommend,
considering flexibility, reliability, and cost. There seems to be a lot
of horror stories on the net about one Imagen printer, on the other hand
a friend at CIT says their's works ok (though he may not have to keep it
going).
I'd sure appreciate all comments & suggestions. Send them to me and I'll
try and summarize to the net
Thanks in advance, Dave Weininger
UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,allegra}!scgvaxd!muddcs!MedChem!Dave
ARPA: muddcs!MedChem!Dave@ucla-cs