grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) (12/06/89)
From article <473f0941.14a1f@force.UUCP>, by covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert): > .... Also, the SLM804 doesn't emulate an Epson printer, > so a lot of goofy little programs like AwardMaker won't print to the SLM804. > My friend has tried using LaserBrain with the SLM804 since he bought theSLM > from me. He reports that word processors fail when he tries to use specials > features like italics or bold. So, LaserBrain doesn't emulate the Epson very > well. And we all know about the buggy Diablo 630 emulator. so, I was simply > ...... > -- > Richard E. Covert (covertr@gtephx) > (602) - 581-4652 > | AG Communications Systems, Phoenix AZ | > UUCP: {ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att}!gtephx!covertr Now that Richard's fixed his signature, we have a better chance of mailing him directly, but I thought the following might be of more general interest. How well the Laserbrain emulates an Epson depends on several things, including how good the printer driver of your applications program is, and what fonts you have installed. On the first point, where I work we nearly despaired when we got the Laserbrain and tried printing the test document from First Word Plus (UK v3.14). Hardly any of the style features worked, and after printing the character table the rest of the document was printed in the tiny 'York 16' default font. We later found out that the supplied PRINTER.CFG file was for the wrong version of First Word Plus. (I suspect Atari UK had simply redistributed an out-of-date German version, but everyone knows how bad they are, so I'll stop flaming them.) After we took the PRINTER.HEX file and reinstalled the .CFG file, all was well. Similarly, with WordPerfect ST: when we tried it with Laserbrain and the WP Epson FX80 driver, we got rubbish, and only with the latest (Aug 89) version of WordPerfect, which comes with a dedicated Laserbrain driver, have we had success. On the second point, the number of 'style features' you get depends on the set of fonts you have installed. With the supplied ELITE.DRF (DRF=Druckerfont?? German again??) file, you can get bold, and italics, but not bold italics, and there's no condensed font. It's not too difficult to add fonts to the file, but they all take up space. ELITE.DRF is 350k, and you could easily double that size if you wanted a full set. You might need a 500k file to cover 99% of your needs. Apart from that, it works pretty well. Except that it occasionally locks up, or starts printing the same few lines all down a page, or throws a page in unexpected places. I'm not an expert, so I don't know if this is a Laserbrain fault or a TOS fault or something to do with the timing of the Atari's DMA channel (I suspect the latter, but I'm not sure.) It is, however, for all its faults a great improvement on the Diablo emulator. To begin with, it actually comes with some documentation! I hope this is some help to Laserbrain users. I'd like to see the PD libraries carry some disks with better-thought-out font sets. Graham -- Graham Thomas, SPRU, Mantell Building, U of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RF, UK JANET: grahamt@uk.ac.sussex.syma EARN/BITNET: grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk ARPA: grahamt%syma.sussex.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk UUCP: grahamt@syma.uucp Phone: +44 273 686758