laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (10/10/84)
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@uw-beaver.arpa
We've got an HP LaserJet ($4k laser printer, daisywheel emulation with
minor smarts) on demo right now. It's not bad. Print quality is very
good. We don't have much experience with it yet, but do have a few
comments and one major flame.
The built-in fonts are, uh, limited, and we have yet to see real
information on what font cartridges are available. Mind you, when I
say the built-ins are limited, I mean in style; each is a 256-character
font with every foreign-language letter imaginable, so there can be few
complaints on that score. Variety of characters aside, though, the
built-in fonts are basically landscape and portrait versions of 10-pitch
Courier, and that's all. There are mumbles about math fonts, and we're
prodding the local HP man about 12-pitch fonts, but no details yet. Also,
note that you can plug in *one* font cartridge at a time, and each of
them holds about 3 fonts maximum.
A pseudo-typesetter it's not, but with a few more fonts it looks like it
would make a *dandy* daisywheel replacement. There is a lot of interest
hereabouts.
Now, for the bad part.
The thing wants to talk 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, XON/XOFF.
PERIOD. 9600 baud, ok. No parity, straightforward. But try getting a
V7 (or derivative thereof, like maybe Xenix) to produce an 8-bit data
path with flow control...!?! The LaserJet *must* have a full 8-bit
path. If you can manage to get all the top bits zero, then the only
major effect will be that the top half of the font will be inaccessible
and the raster-graphics sequences won't work (they need 8-bit binary data).
But if your hardware or software insists on using that top bit for parity,
then you simply can't talk to the LaserJet. Being among the lucky ones
with source licences, we put in a quick kernel kludge, and are now
talking to the thing just fine. But before you sign a PO, make very
very sure that your Unix can give you a full 8-bit output path without
resorting to raw mode (which deprives you of flow control).
<FLAME ON>
Whatever possessed the normally-sensible people at HP to produce such
an abortion of a serial interface? Don't they know that there are a
lot of systems out there -- not just Unixes, either! -- that insist
that a character is 7 bits only?!? This is preposterous. Whoever
imposed this ridiculous constraint should be shot. At the very least
there should be a feature like the one common on small microcomputer
printers, in which a specific escape character means "act like the top
bit was on in the next character". Our $400 Geminis will do this, but
the $4k LaserJet won't! GRRR!!! [Are you listening, HP?]
<FLAME OFF>
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry