khl@doc.ic.ac.uk (Kang Ho Lee) (12/07/90)
Hi, I have recently purchased a Panasoinc 1124, which is compatible with Epson LQ2500 according to the manual. First of all, let me say I am fairly satisfied with its output. My first disappointment came when I tried to use it in A-Max, the ImageWriter emulation provided by Readysoft is next to useless with its weird aspect ratio. Before I had a printer, I used to bring all my work back to my Mac at college to print, now that I have one, I would like to know if anyone actually using one of the third party Epson drivers on thier A-Max. I remembered there was a mention of drivers by a company called GDT Softworks Inc. in the A-max manual, anyone using/tried that? My second disappointment came when I tried printing from PenPal. I used letter quality throughout the session. When I tried to print a document using printer font option, I lost the WYSIWYG feature of PenPal. Fair enough I thought, I'll just use the Amiga font option. The printing speed was so low that I almost fell asleep ( if not for the loud printing noise ) waiting for it to print one page. What's more, the fonts were so chunky that it's not even fit for my listing output. Am I doing something wrong here or what? What I think will be useful is a screen version of the printer fonts ( especially the proportional spacing font BOLD PS ). Please send me any advice/tips/ideas ( especially for A-max ) that you think are of help to me. -- Kang Ho LEE email : khl@doc.ic.ac.uk Department of Computing address: 180 Queens Gate Imperial College London SW7 2BZ, UK
huebner@aero.aero.org (Robert E. Huebner) (12/08/90)
In article <2630@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, khl@doc.ic.ac.uk (Kang Ho Lee) writes: |> Hi, |> I have recently purchased a Panasoinc 1124, which is compatible with Epson |> LQ2500 according to the manual. First of all, let me say I am fairly satisfied |> with its output. My first disappointment came when I tried to use it in A-Max, |> the ImageWriter emulation provided by Readysoft is next to useless with its |> weird aspect ratio. Before I had a printer, I used to bring all my work back |> to my Mac at college to print, now that I have one, I would like to know if |> anyone actually using one of the third party Epson drivers on thier A-Max. I |> remembered there was a mention of drivers by a company called GDT Softworks |> Inc. in the A-max manual, anyone using/tried that? I tried using a third-party (not sure if it was commercial, because I decided not to use it) Epson Driver. Specifically it was an "RX" driver. It was painfully slow. Also, it did not allow nearly the number of options the normal ImageWriter driver does. Perhaps their are better ones around (I should hope so) but if you see an Epson RX driver for sale, beware. It does not suffice. I downloaded this driver from a local Mac BBS. It was not a pirate BBS, but with things like printer drivers, Mac users seem to "blind" themselve to the piracy issue. Sorta like with DA's - even the most honest Mac users I know don't think twice about using a screen blanker some company is asking $50 for. Thank god for the Fred Fish collection. The driver made no mention of GDT Softworks. I was shocked that this printing problem wasn't fixed in Amax-II. |> My second disappointment came when I tried printing from PenPal. I used |> letter quality throughout the session. When I tried to print a document using |> printer font option, I lost the WYSIWYG feature of PenPal. Fair enough I |> thought, I'll just use the Amiga font option. The printing speed was so low |> that I almost fell asleep ( if not for the loud printing noise ) waiting for |> it to print one page. What's more, the fonts were so chunky that it's not even |> fit for my listing output. Am I doing something wrong here or what? What I |> think will be useful is a screen version of the printer fonts ( especially the |> proportional spacing font BOLD PS ). ProWrite provides fonts that give accurate on-screen representations, but I don't recall seeing a BoldPS equivalent. I too take offense at the quality of Workbench dot matrix output. Even since I first printed something from the notepad, I was severely disappointed. I previously had a Mac Plus, which did a much better job outputting to its ImageWriter. I can look at the specs and see that my Panasonic has a better resolution than my ImageWriter, but comparing the output of the two from their respective computers is like night and day. Why hasn't somebody developed better Epson compatible drivers and/or better Workbench fonts. What the Mac did was take a larger font (2X point size for ImageWriter, 3X for LQ) and shrink it down when printing in best mode. This works wonders, especially considering its only 9 pins. Maybe if the workbench drivers were improved significantly, fewer programs would bulk them and write their own (PageStream, ProWrite, and several others). Oh well, enough whining. For all I know this has been improved under 2.0. For now, PageStream (with sufficient memory) is your best bet for getting good output from the Panasonic. AMAX? I think its dot matrix output is DOA (dead on arrival, probably a purely American phrase). Even ATM (Adobe Typeface Manager) probably won't help much (if it runs - does anyone know?). -MB- :P Just kidding ---- Robert Huebner huebner@aerospace.aero.org The Aerospace Corporation FFRDC ----
wfaust@venus.UUCP (Wolf Faust) (12/08/90)
>Why hasn't somebody developed >better Epson compatible drivers and/or better Workbench fonts. There is a driver called "EpsonQPlus" (there is also a '030 version available...). The latest Revision is 2. This driver is much faster than the normal WB EpsonQ driver and supports more things like 360*360DPI color graphic dumps... I'll send you this revision by E-mail... For those with Star and Oki compatible printers, I have a special version for them here (There is also a canon 48 inkjet driver...). These versions are specialy adopted for those printers, so you can expect, they do everything possible by AmigaDOS. I'm also working on a driver version with run-length-encoding and greater pinter buffer (EpsonQPlus Rev 2 uses up to 64Kb buffer). Tough, my work eats up all my free time so don't expect this very soon... (let's hope for x-mas ;-) Specialy on '030 this new driver will give you normal speed increases up to 50% (I'm not selling this driver, so this is not a 'special measured peak')! >Robert Huebner huebner@aerospace.aero.org ---- Wolf Faust cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmger!venus!wfaust Tel: +(49)69-5486556 FIDO: 2:243/43.5
252u3130@fergvax.unl.edu (Phil Dietz) (12/09/90)
In article <93806@aerospace.AERO.ORG> huebner@aero.aero.org (Robert E. Huebner) writes: >In article <2630@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, khl@doc.ic.ac.uk (Kang Ho Lee) writes: >|> Hi, >|> I have recently purchased a Panasoinc 1124, which is compatible >with Epson >|> LQ2500 according to the manual. First of all, let me say I am fairly >satisfied >|> with its output. My first disappointment came when I tried to use it >in A-Max, >|> the ImageWriter emulation provided by Readysoft is next to useless with its >|> weird aspect ratio. Before I had a printer, I used to bring all my work back >|> to my Mac at college to print, now that I have one, I would like to know if >|> anyone actually using one of the third party Epson drivers on thier A-Max. I >|> remembered there was a mention of drivers by a company called GDT Softworks >|> Inc. in the A-max manual, anyone using/tried that? > >I tried using a third-party (not sure if it was commercial, because I >decided not to use it) Epson Driver. Specifically it was an "RX" driver. >It was painfully slow. Also, it did not allow nearly the number of >options the normal ImageWriter driver does. Perhaps their are better >ones around (I should hope so) but if you see an Epson RX driver for >sale, beware. It does not suffice. I downloaded this driver from a >local Mac BBS. It was not a pirate BBS, but with things like printer >drivers, Mac users seem to "blind" themselve to the piracy issue. Sorta >like with DA's - even the most honest Mac users I know don't think twice >about using a screen blanker some company is asking $50 for. Thank god >for the Fred Fish collection. The driver made no mention of GDT Softworks. > >I was shocked that this printing problem wasn't fixed in Amax-II. > >|> My second disappointment came when I tried printing from PenPal. I used >|> letter quality throughout the session. When I tried to print a >document using >|> printer font option, I lost the WYSIWYG feature of PenPal. Fair enough I >|> thought, I'll just use the Amiga font option. The printing speed was so low >|> that I almost fell asleep ( if not for the loud printing noise ) waiting for >|> it to print one page. What's more, the fonts were so chunky that it's >not even >|> fit for my listing output. Am I doing something wrong here or what? What I >|> think will be useful is a screen version of the printer fonts ( >especially the >|> proportional spacing font BOLD PS ). > >ProWrite provides fonts that give accurate on-screen representations, but >I don't recall seeing a BoldPS equivalent. > >I too take offense at the quality of Workbench dot matrix output. Even since >I first printed something from the notepad, I was severely disappointed. >I previously had a Mac Plus, which did a much better job outputting to its >ImageWriter. I can look at the specs and see that my Panasonic has a better >resolution than my ImageWriter, but comparing the output of the two from their >respective computers is like night and day. Why hasn't somebody developed >better Epson compatible drivers and/or better Workbench fonts. >What the Mac did was take a larger font >(2X point size for ImageWriter, 3X for LQ) and shrink it down when printing >in best mode. This works wonders, especially considering its only 9 pins. > >Maybe if the workbench drivers were improved significantly, fewer programs >would bulk them and write their own (PageStream, ProWrite, and several >others). > >Oh well, enough whining. For all I know this has been improved under >2.0. For now, PageStream (with sufficient memory) is your best bet for >getting good output from the Panasonic. AMAX? I think its dot matrix >output is DOA (dead on arrival, probably a purely American phrase). Even >ATM (Adobe Typeface Manager) probably won't help much (if it runs - does >anyone know?). > > > -MB- > :P Just kidding >---- >Robert Huebner huebner@aerospace.aero.org > The Aerospace Corporation FFRDC >---- Hmmm...I also have a Panasonic 1124....but I've found ways of getting better printing stuff. First, go get the EpsonQPlus driver thats floating on ABCFD20...it provides real nice 360x360 reolution 2 pass and a 180x180 (ONE pass!) Too print out pictures, FinePrint is about the best program made! It will actually print 360x360 dpi 16 color prints on your BW printer! It will strike each dot up to 16 times to give a darker color. The resolution that it prints out is perfectly beautiful.... As for the AMAX problem...All ReadySoft can do is to have is stream the data to the printer. If it were to allow a printer with 360x360 resolution, it would have to SCALE the picture 2 or 3 times. When the final output is made, HUGE jaggies would be present (whats the point if faster already has the jaggies option) The only way to get crisp clean Scaled graphics would be to have a full fledged scaling program (macdraw or propage comes to mind). Oh well...I guess we HIGH QUALITY printer owners should just wish we had a $600 72 dpi ImageWriter..... :-) right! Phil Dietz <<<=================--------- Cheap Ad ---------===================<<< Phil Dietz SWL Lincoln 565 MEGS! 2 lines 252u3130@fergvax.unl.edu (402)421-1963 AMIGA, IBM, MAC, GIFS IBM'ers and Mac'ers are shopping for a life. Amiga the best!