mic@lapis.berkeley.edu (Michel Bruneau) (06/16/87)
Well, I have been using Word PErfect for quite a time (with satisfaction) on good old Okidata dot matrix correspondance quality printer, but seeing the nice presentation of my UNIX friends on troff, I was tempted to try to use THE HP Laserjet to improve the look of my documents. Well, frustrations were just starting. First of all, how come on the Laserjet, Printer NUmber, fonts, spacing, and all that crap are clusted together while using Word Perfect??? To change to a special font you have to change printer definition??? DO I read correctly. ALSO, I appeared that there was only one font available with this $4000 toy when I played with it (Roman 10cpi, not even 12cpi!!!). Finally, it was impossible to use the IBM extended character set (upper 128 ASCII) that I used a lot in my papers. Oh, and I forget, I haven't found a way yet to get boxes (I guess that goes along the upper 128 ASCII). THE point!? Well, I didn't buy the laser printer, and I do not have access to the manuals if any. But assuming that Word PErfect is rigth in their presentation of supported printers, what is going on here/??? I am in the very deep fog (appropriate in this city). Why is such an expenssive machine so shortsigthed (or is it me????). My feeling is that I do not understand the fundamentals of laser printers, which is very disappointing as I thougth these machines were to make out life easier along with nicer presentation. In the meantime, I will stick to my Okidata as I can get many cpi, lpi, fonts and extended ascii, and more.... Any enligthning comment will be gladly read!
pavlov@hscfvax.UUCP (06/17/87)
In article <3962@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>, mic@lapis.berkeley.edu (Michel Bruneau) writes: > Well, I have been using Word PErfect for quite a time (with satisfaction) > on good old Okidata dot matrix correspondance quality printer, but > seeing the nice presentation of my UNIX friends on troff, I was tempted > to try to use THE HP Laserjet to improve the look of my documents. > Well, frustrations were just starting. First of all, how come on the > Laserjet, Printer NUmber, fonts, spacing, and all that crap are clusted > together while using Word Perfect??? To change to a special font you > have to change printer definition??? DO I read correctly. ALSO, > I appeared that there was only one font available with this $4000 toy .... etc .... No, you do not have to reset printer definitions; there is a facility to change fonts and spacing and another to set bold, italic, etc. The LaserJet II lists for $2500 but can be purchased for apx. $1850 (with 1/2 meg memory). I use a LaserJet as well as several dot-matrix printers. From my point of view, the LaserJet is quite more difficult to manipulate than the dot-matrix printers. The most important advantages for our site are that the LaserJet produces better-quality output, is faster, and is much less noisy. greg pavlov, fstrf,amherst, ny
brown@nicmad.UUCP (06/17/87)
In article <3962@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mic@lapis.berkeley.edu(Michel Bruneau) writes:
[ ... lots of questions regarding the LaserJet ... ]
I'll say what I can about the HP LaserJet and the Apple LaserWriter, but
can't say much about WordPerfect.
First off, you didn't say which LaserJet you have, as it does make a
difference. The early LaserJets only support the internal fonts and one
font cartridge. Roman 10cpi font is the major internal font. Notice that
it is of fixed size, vertically and horizontally. Font cartridge B, F & P
contain Times-Roman proportional, but at 10 point size only. Font cartridge
K contains Times-Roman 10 and 8 point, proportional, with some math stuff.
Font Cartridges T, U and V contain Helvectica Bold in 10, 12 and 14 point
as well as Helvetica Medium in 6 and 8 point. But, notice that I said
Font Cartridges, meaning you can't have all of these at once. Makes
printing things a little rough. Even though the Apple LaserWriter has
all of these resident, troff doesn't allow mixing Times-Roman and
Helvectica at the same time.
If you were to have the LaserJet+ or the 500, then you can do downloadable
fonts, which some of the newer versions of text processors are supporting.
I thought that WordPerfect 4.2 did support the LaserJet's downloadable
fonts. For sure it supports the LaserWriter's PostScript language.
But, good news on the HP LaserJet front, they will be supporting PostScript
in their newer series II laser printers.
So, in conclusion, I would check the model of your LaserJet and the
version of your WordPerfect.
On the subject of IBM characters, most software doesn't support the
extended IBM character set, especially HP and the LaserJet. In the case
of the Okidata, I'm not sure how you are entering the extended characters,
ie, using ALT+### to get the character on the screen, but the HP will not
be able to print it. You need a driver for the HP using downloadable
characters. Actually you need something that UNIX has and that is TBL,
so that you can draw boxes. It really does work great with troff and
the Apple LaserWriter. I don't know if WordPerfect supports drawing
boxes or not.
In other words, the IBM extended character set is not the real world
way of drawing boxes. This is my opinion, of course. It is great for
the IBM-PC's screen, but lousy for putting onto paper.
The above has been my experience, working with the HP LaserJet+ and the
Apple LaserWriter+.
--
harvard-\ ihnp4--\
Mr. Video seismo!uwvax.......!nicmad!brown
rutgers-/ decvax--/
terminus-/cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (06/17/87)
> Well, I have been using Word PErfect for quite a time (with satisfaction) > on good old Okidata dot matrix correspondance quality printer, but > seeing the nice presentation of my UNIX friends on troff, I was tempted > to try to use THE HP Laserjet to improve the look of my documents. > Well, frustrations were just starting. First of all, how come on the > Laserjet, Printer NUmber, fonts, spacing, and all that crap are clusted > together while using Word Perfect??? To change to a special font you > have to change printer definition??? DO I read correctly. ALSO, > I appeared that there was only one font available with this $4000 toy > when I played with it (Roman 10cpi, not even 12cpi!!!). Finally, it > was impossible to use the IBM extended character set (upper 128 ASCII) > that I used a lot in my papers. Oh, and I forget, I haven't found a > way yet to get boxes (I guess that goes along the upper 128 ASCII). > > THE point!? Well, I didn't buy the laser printer, and I do not have > access to the manuals if any. But assuming that Word PErfect is rigth > in their presentation of supported printers, what is going on here/??? > I am in the very deep fog (appropriate in this city). > > Why is such an expenssive machine so shortsigthed (or is it me????). In fact, the limitation isn't the LaserJet, but WordPerfect. The LaserJet is far less versatile than the Apple LaserWriter (or any other PostScript printer), but only one choice of font and size is a deficiency of software. Clayton E. Cramer
tth@unc.cs.unc.edu (Terry Hudgins ) (06/18/87)
In article <1718@nicmad.UUCP> brown@nicmad.UUCP (Mr. Video) writes: >In article <3962@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mic@lapis.berkeley.edu(Michel Bruneau) writes: >[ ... lots of questions regarding the LaserJet ... ] > >But, good news on the HP LaserJet front, they will be supporting PostScript >in their newer series II laser printers. > Is this TRUE? Will there be boards for our existing series IIs? Is DDL slinking out the BACK DOOR? (Sorry, too much John Dvorak ;-) Seriously, there must be an interesting story behind HP's decision if this is true. Terry Hudgins tth@unc.UUCP
tfra@ur-tut.UUCP (Tom Frauenhofer) (06/19/87)
[Et tu, line-eater?] In a recent issue of Infoworld (I don't remember which), there was an article which quoted a HP representative as saying "we couldn't afford to ignore Postscript any longer" (at least, that's was I recall). Both DDL and Postscript will be supported via add-on boards that will be made by third-party vendors. As an aside on WP and the "vanilla" Laserjet: Yes, it is a toy laser printer, at least in this day and age. For its time, however, it was a significant step in producing inexpensive high-quality output. If HP had someone who understood fonts better, they might have even come out with a decent cartridge that people could use. Well, at least they came out with printers that support downloadable fonts on later models. Now if only someone will come out with a disk (CD-Rom?) add-on to a laser printer to let them support even more fonts, we'll be cooking. -- Tom Frauenhofer ...!seismo!rochester!ur-tut!tfra "The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -- Harlan Ellison