laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (02/29/84)
From cbosgd!djb@Berkeley Tue Feb 28 13:41:45 1984
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To: laser-lovers@uw-beaver
Subject: Re: DEC LN01
References: <854@uw-beaver>
ReSent-date: Tue 28 Feb 84 13:38:55-PST
ReSent-from: Richard Furuta <Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA>
ReSent-to: "Laser Lovers": ;
We have a DEC LN01 here and, despite our best efforts, it is not
usable as anything other than a lineprinter. That's right - no
troff support, no TeX support, no graphics support. DEC is unable
or unwilling to make available the font download information we
need (the documentation is, by the way, absolutely lousy) in order
to handle troff output, they are making no noises at all about
graphics capabilities or raster bit dumps, so it just sits in our
terminal room and runs as a high-speed, high-quality line printer
(and it has some problems even doing that). Fortunately, we got
the LN01 on a no-charge lease, and I'd have to say that price is
indeed a reflection of quality.
What's really sad is that we have several QMS Lasergrafix 1200's,
and they just blow the doors off of the LN01. I can get nice, crisp
lineprinter output, superb document-quality output via QTROFF (although
QMS is painfully slow at releasing the fonts), and great graphics hardcopy
using QMS's special graphics command language. The documentation is
pretty good too. On the occasions I have had problems, I have gotten
good response from the folks at QMS. Since both the QMS and LN01 are
based on the Xerox 2700 engine, it is quite startling that there is so
much difference between the capabilities of the two units.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give the LN01 a 2, and the QMS an 8.
As soon as QMS gets all the fonts together they'll probably rate a 9.
(It'll take ditroff support at least before I'll go 9.5).
* *
David Bryant
AT&T Bell Laboratories
* Columbus, OH 43213
* (614) 860-4516
* .
. djb@cbosgd.UUCP
cbosgd!djb@Berkeley.ARPA
* *