laser-lovers@uw-beaver.UUCP (12/08/83)
>From boyle@ANL-MCS.ARPA Wed Dec 7 16:54:20 1983
From: cbosgd!mark@Berkeley (Mark Horton)
Subject: Merganthaler laser printer
I heard a rumor last night that Merganthaler has a laser printer out
for $20,000. It has low resolution (for Merganthaler) of 2500 lines/inch.
They are supposedly very helpful with software to drive it.
I talked to the Chicago office of Merganthaler, (312) 439-9800. They
say they make four printer models. All of these are *phototypsetters*
(not xerography-based)--they produce output that must be used for
printing.
The one that sounds most like Mark's description is the Model 101.
It is "sold to newspapers all over the country". It uses a laser to
form the image, but the process is, of course, photographic. It has
a 70 pica width (11.5 in.) and almost any length. The price is
~$17,000. I'm sorry; I forgot to ask the resolution.
More interesting to me is a new machine just anounced over the
weekend for $28,950 (why not $28,999?). By implication it does not
use a laser for image formation. It is capable of storing 40 fonts
on-line. It uses a layout program called ATP. The interesting
feature is that it has self-contained automatic kerning--overlap of
character combinations such as AV--for 480 pairs of characters. It
can be hooked to a Typeview terminal--lets you see exactly what the
printed output will looked like. I infer from what the salesman said
that these machines are oriented toward doing most of the layout by
means other than commands in the text input (e.g., interactively).
When I asked if it worked with Unix and troff, he replied: "No, but
we can capture keystrokes as they are entered into a system, on
either synchronous or asynchronous lines." So I conclude no troff
support.