gottlieb@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu.UUCP (01/29/87)
Does anyone have experience with Texas Instruments new OmniLaser printers? I have dvi2ps from mit via the University of Washington TeX distribution. Sending the output from my Sun to an Apple Laser writer the characters look fine. Sending the same file to the OmniLaser 2115 the characters are much too thin in many places. Not only am I unhappy with the output, I can't understand why, if I am downloading the fonts, the hardcopy would look different on these two printers if they are both running PostScript. I am also interested in maintenance experience. This printer has a Ricoh engine. There is an Imagen on campus with another Ricoh engine which has been no end of trouble. The person who is in charge of the Imagen looked at the OmniLaser and noted a great similarity with the other Ricoh engine.
boyle@ANL-MCS.ARPA.UUCP (02/12/87)
In my experience, if you are used to a LaserWriter, the reason characters look too thin is that the LW is a "write black" engine, where as the "thin" printer has a "write white" engine. Since what is written tends to spill over, a write black engine makes the characters appear fatter, while a write white one makes them to thin. Probably if you look at them with a magnifying glass, you will see that the OmniLaser characters are actually sharper, but I prefer the LW ones. I am told by Adobe that they have tried to devise a way to compensate for this difference in PostScript output, but have not found a satisfactory way to do so.
MACKAY@WARD.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU.UUCP (02/13/87)
The problem of write-white fonts has already been answered in part in the Laser-Lovers list, but here are two more details. My paper in the Protext III Proceedings (Boole Press, P.O. Box 5, 51 Sandycove Road, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. Ireland) discusses precisely that problem, and illustrates it quite effectively. We are about to release the first version of a font editing program which allows you to see the effect on the screen, and further studies are in the mill. The problem is extreme in printers, and somewhat less so on black-character white-background screens. The Protext III paper (I am told that the proceedings are through the press and about to be mailed) includes the listing of some lines of code which will correct the effect somewhat in cmbase.mf if you are using METAFONT. Pierre A, MacKay TUG Site Coordinator for Unix Systems -------