waters@ORACLE.DEC (Greg Waters, 225-4986, HLO2-1/J12) (01/20/86)
I'm surprised to hear all these complaints about using 2700s and LN01s as true laser printers. I also get the impression that few machines are harder to support under TeX (troff? Scribe?). However, it's certainly not impossible to work around the machines' limitations. I don't know how much font RAM is in a 2700, but this was a problem only in the very first LN01s. Internally, we have dozens of sites using LN01s with TeX, and the results are excellent. Most large jobs loose some time to font loading, but this never takes more than about 5 min. In any event, the document is done printing well before an LN03 (or other $3K printer) could have finished. Unfortunately, a stock LN01 is limited to "mosaic" graphics. That is, you can use things like the AMGR (CMGR?) font, and the LaTeX "picture" environ- ment. I am not aware of any method to print even small amounts of arbitrary images on the page. So, the LN01 certainly isn't a printer for all applications. BUT, if you've already got one, you should put it to use with TeX. We use two TeX packages with the LN01. Software documentation writers obtained support from TeXset Inc., including Compugraphic fonts at 300 dpi and 1000 dpi. The rest of us use a homebrew .DVI converter with the Stanford fonts. I used to think that this TeX support package, including all Stanford fonts converted to LN01 format, was available on the VMS TeX distribution tape. Also, I thought that one university reverse- engineered the LN01 and developed another TeX support package. We can't openly distribute our DVI-to-LN01 converter, because it was written using the proprietary LN01 functional spec. from XEROX. I think it has been distributed in a limited way, however. Will someone who knows about the present contents of the VMS TeX tape please clarify this? Greg Waters, DEC Hudson, MA ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-oracle!waters.
DRF@SU-SCORE.ARPA (David Fuchs) (01/20/86)
Well, I make the VMS TeX distribution tape, and there is no 2700 or LN01 driver on it. None has ever been offered to us. And if one shows up, you can be sure that the first thing I'm going to do is to call Xerox and ask their lawyers whether I'm going to get into trouble for giving away their trade secrets. I suspect that the DEC sites that use TeX on LN01s are doing non-math text, which only need 50 baselines or so per page, and just a few fonts, and have fairly regular word spacing, so they don't run into the limitations as quickly. Even if I'm totally wrong about all of this, and it's a dandy machine, how can anybody tell if they can't get the specs to effectively use the thing? (We've had one sitting here for a few years virtually unused.) I'd sure be queasy depending on 3rd-party technical specs. Who needs this hassle for a silly printer? -------