dml@esl.UUCP (Denis Lynch) (07/02/88)
The HP DeskJet seems to be the answer to a maiden's prayer for a home printer: 300DPI, cheap ($700 or so), and fast enough for us mellow Californians. But, of course, there is the question: is there a driver that can make this printer do anything useful on a Mac? I'll report to the net if I get any interesting e-mail responses. Thanks. -- Denis Lynch decwrl!borealis!\ ESL Incorporated ucbcad!ucbvax!- ames!esl!dml ARPA: dml%esl.ESL.COM@ames.arc.nasa.gov ihnp4!/ / SMAIL: dml@esl.ESL.COM lll-lcc!
mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Mike Khaw) (07/03/88)
> The HP DeskJet seems to be the answer to a maiden's prayer for a home > printer: 300DPI, cheap ($700 or so), and fast enough for us mellow > Californians. I just read a review somewhere (MacWeek? Macintosh Today?). It pointed out that currently you can only use a few built-in fonts on the DeskJet from a Mac, and if you have text and graphics on the same page the dot density goes down to some low number (2 digits?). I'd hold off until someone comes out with a decent driver. Yeah, I'd like a quiet, less expensive 300dpi printer on my Mac too! Mike Khaw -- internet: mkhaw@teknowledge.arpa uucp: {uunet|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|uw-beaver}!mkhaw%teknowledge.arpa hardcopy: Teknowledge Inc, 1850 Embarcadero Rd, POB 10119, Palo Alto, CA 94303
leonardr@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (07/05/88)
dml@esl.UUCP(Denis Lynch) in comp.sys.mac >The HP DeskJet seems to be the answer to a maiden's prayer for a home >printer: 300DPI, cheap ($700 or so), and fast enough for us mellow >Californians. > >But, of course, there is the question: is there a driver that can make >this printer do anything useful on a Mac? > >I'll report to the net if I get any interesting e-mail responses. > I had the pleasure to see at the recent MacHack '88 a DeskJet working with Orange Micro's GrapplerLQ. The grappler is a hardware interface that works along with some INITs and the standard Apple ImageWriter LQ driver to driver the DeskJet. The programmer did a real good job on the software and it includes a built in spooler (which works with both MF and UniFinder) and lots of other options which are accessible from teh Control Panel (cdev). (Disclaimer: I now know the programmer, personally!) +---------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ + + Any thing I say may be taken as + + Leonard Rosenthol + fact, then again you might decide+ + President, LazerWare, inc. + that it really isn't, so you + + + never know, do you?? + + leonardr@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu + + + GEnie: MACgician + MacNET: MACgician + + Delphi: MACgician + + + + + +---------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
whiteheada@byuvax.bitnet (07/06/88)
Grappler LQ from Orange Micro 1-(800)-223-8029 was released last week. It will drive the YHP DeskJet just fine! *
rterry@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Ray Terry) (07/07/88)
I just spoke to SoftStyle today regarding an additional printer driver to the PrintWorks collection that would work w/the DeskJet (they already market drivers in PrintWorks for the ThinkJet, QuietJet, PaintJet, LaserJet, etc). They told me that a DeskJet driver was currently being developed and was in beta testing. No target date as to when it would be available to the public. Hope that helps... Ray Terry rterry%hpda@hplabs.hp.com MacScience BBS (sysop) (408) 247-8307
drc@dbase.UUCP (Dennis Cohen) (07/08/88)
dml@esl.UUCP(Denis Lynch) in comp.sys.mac >The HP DeskJet seems to be the answer to a maiden's prayer for a home >printer: 300DPI, cheap ($700 or so), and fast enough for us mellow >Californians. > >But, of course, there is the question: is there a driver that can make >this printer do anything useful on a Mac? > >I'll report to the net if I get any interesting e-mail responses. > If you are interested in a driver specifically suited to this printer you should contact Mike Amling at Semper Software (the SemperSoft Modula-2 people). He has one of these printers, has written a driver for it, and was looking into the marketability of the driver. He even had it set up so that FKEY 4 worked with the printer. Dennis Cohen Claris ------------ Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed above are _MINE_!
fjo@ttrdf.UUCP (Frank Owen ) (07/09/88)
in article <46100177@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>, leonardr@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu says: > I had the pleasure to see at the recent MacHack '88 a DeskJet working with > Orange Micro's GrapplerLQ. The grappler is a hardware interface that works > along with some INITs and the standard Apple ImageWriter LQ driver to driver > the DeskJet. It sounds to me that since it uses the Apple Imagewriter LQ driver, that the Grappler simply converts Imagewriter LQ code to compatible DeskJet codes. Basically, it makes the DeskJet "look" like an Imagewriter LQ. This is an O.K. solution, but not the best one. The Imagewriter LQ has resolution of 216x216 dpi, while the DeskJet does 300 dpi. Asside from the possible scaling problems, it would be nice if you could get true 300 dpi output on the DeskJet. The Grappler is also a piece of hardware, ( extra $) which is really not necessary. The correct solution is to write a DeskJet driver that gets "Choosen" like the Apple drivers. I have begun working on such a beast, but have been discouraged by the lack of documentation from Apple on how to do it. Then, as soon as I thought I had it all figured out, and actually went out and bought a DeskJet, I find out that Cricket software will be coming out with a driver Real Soon Now. HP is endorsing their driver for the PaintJet, and so will probably do the same for the DeskJet. From the article I have read, Cricket's drivers apparently extend QuickDraw to do some PostScript-type operations like text rotation. Sounds like this will be a good product when it comes out. The output quality should be at least as good as the LaserWrite SC. Oh well, perhaps my driver will end up in the public domain. As an aside, the DeskJet is really a nice printer. HP should be commended on their design. The only gripe I have is it's relatively slow speed at drawing graphics. Since this is the way it will be driven in a Mac environment, it's really too bad. -- Frank Owen (fjo@ttrdf) 312-982-2182 AT&T Information Systems Computer Systems Division, 5555 Touhy Ave., Skokie, IL 60077 PATH: ...!att!ttrdf!fjo
dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (07/09/88)
In article <694@ttrdf.UUCP> fjo@ttrdf.UUCP (Frank Owen ) writes: > This is an O.K. solution, but not the best one. The Imagewriter LQ has > resolution of 216x216 dpi, while the DeskJet does 300 dpi. Asside from > the possible scaling problems, it would be nice if you could get > true 300 dpi output on the DeskJet. The Grappler is also a piece of > hardware, ( extra $) which is really not necessary. Agreed, in general... although I suspect that any third-party Mac driver capable of doing a really-nice 300 DPI image is likely to cost about the same as a Grappler. GDT Softworks' driver-set for the DeskJet costs about $100, and it doesn't give 300 DPI graphics. > The correct solution is to write a DeskJet driver that gets > "Choosen" like the Apple drivers. Yup... something like the ImageWriter LQ driver, but a bit more so. It'll probably be memory-hungry, but is definitely the best approach in the long run. GDT is apparently thinking seriously of writing such a beast. > I have begun working on such a > beast, but have been discouraged by the lack of documentation from Apple > on how to do it. Earle Horton's articles on his daisy-wheel driver, published in MacTutor, may be useful. > Then, as soon as I thought I had it all figured out, and > actually went out and bought a DeskJet, I find out that Cricket software will > be coming out with a driver Real Soon Now. HP is endorsing their driver > for the PaintJet, and so will probably do the same for the DeskJet. Hmmm... when I called Cricket, I was told that their drivers are designed to work only with their own software... they're special-purpose graphics drivers and aren't suitable for general-purpose use. I was also told that they don't have a set date for the production of the DeskJet driver. If I was told wrong, I'd be very interested to know the real facts of the matter! > From the article I have read, Cricket's drivers apparently > extend QuickDraw to do some PostScript-type operations like text > rotation. Yummie! > Sounds like this will be a good product when it comes out. > The output quality should be at least as good as the LaserWrite SC. > Oh well, perhaps my driver will end up in the public domain. > > As an aside, the DeskJet is really a nice printer. HP should be > commended on their design. The only gripe I have is it's relatively > slow speed at drawing graphics. Since this is the way it will be driven in > a Mac environment, it's really too bad. Hmmm. I have a suspicion that the speed limitation may be due to the fact that the driver must shove a _lot_ of data over a medium-speed serial link. At 300 dots/inch, arbitrary bit-graphics (anything that couldn't meaningfully be compressed) would require the transmission of 90,000 bits per square inch... at 9600 baud, that's almost 9 seconds! I don't know what the actual interface speed is, but I'd be a bit surprised if it's >19,200 baud. At this speed, an 8-by-10 image of arbitrary bit-graphics would require over 300 seconds (5 minutes) to download the bits. This is certainly a worse-case scenario, of course. I haven't studied HP-GL, but I infer that it contain support for both compressed graphics (e.g. handling solid areas of black, white, or a fixed pattern), "cursor" positioning, and perhaps some object-oriented capabilities as well (e.g. "draw a line from point (a,b) to point (c,d)"). An "optimal" DeskJet driver would make use of all of these abilities, as well as the DJ's built-in fonts where applicable, and would seek to minimize the total number of bytes shipped down to the printer. Not an easy job to do right... especially if the printer doesn't have enough memory to hold an entire page-image at once, and must be sent the data broken down into bands. -- Dave Platt VOICE: (415) 493-8805 USNAIL: Coherent Thought Inc. 3350 West Bayshore #205 Palo Alto CA 94303 UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@sun.com, ...@uunet.uu.net
gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu (07/10/88)
Re: Printer Drivers
1. I can't see how the Grappler could avoid producing lousy results.
Most 24-pin printers achieve 180 dpi resolution -- the imagewriter LQ
is 216 dpi, larger by a factor of 6/5. Since the Grappler is not in
the imaging loop (it just tries to squish bits, right?) I expect
the 24-pin grappler prints pages that look worse than the Imagewriter
II's output.
2. Watch an Imagewriter II some day. I think the driver is HIGHLY
optimized to trim excess data from the transmission stream. It looks
like it trims the margins from the output data (saving 37 square
inches), AND it skips blank scan lines (as much as 50% of the rest of
the data, if you're printing double-space text). This reduces the
download information A LOT.
3. For best results, you need 2.5 * fonts for a 180dpi driver. The
Apple font scaling algorithms, while fast, produce fairly lousy
results. What I'm contemplating is writing a very slow combinatorial
optimization procedure to extract an outline font, scale it, and then
re-image the characters. Then, this batch utility could be used to
produce medium-quality 2.5 * magnified fonts from any given font set.
Are there any font editors out there that do high-quality scaling FROM
BITMAPS (not from splined font representations)?
-- Someone contemplating writing an EPSON LQ printer driver...
Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,ihnp4,harvard}!uiucdcs!gilliessbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten) (07/10/88)
In article <6443@coherent.com> dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: >> As an aside, the DeskJet is really a nice printer. HP should be >> commended on their design. The only gripe I have is it's relatively >> slow speed at drawing graphics. Since this is the way it will be driven in >> a Mac environment, it's really too bad. > >Hmmm. I have a suspicion that the speed limitation may be due to the >fact that the driver must shove a _lot_ of data over a medium-speed >serial link. At 300 dots/inch, arbitrary bit-graphics (anything that >couldn't meaningfully be compressed) would require the transmission of >90,000 bits per square inch... at 9600 baud, that's almost 9 seconds! >I don't know what the actual interface speed is, but I'd be a bit >surprised if it's >19,200 baud. At this speed, an 8-by-10 image of >arbitrary bit-graphics would require over 300 seconds (5 minutes) to >download the bits. That shouldn't be necessary, unless you're printing a completely black page. We use TeX and a companion program that converts DVI files to something the LaserJet II can understand. The bitmap for each page is usually quite small and in fact the only speed limitation when printing is how fast the LaserJet can spit the pages out (quite a relief after using troff->PostScript->LaserWriter). -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." {uunet,cmcl2}!esquire!sbb | - David Letterman
leonardr@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (07/11/88)
fjo@ttrdf.UUCP(Frank Owen) in comp.sys.mac >in article <46100177@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>, leonardr@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu says: >> I had the pleasure to see at the recent MacHack '88 a DeskJet working with >> Orange Micro's GrapplerLQ. The grappler is a hardware interface that works >> along with some INITs and the standard Apple ImageWriter LQ driver to driver >> the DeskJet. > > It sounds to me that since it uses the Apple Imagewriter LQ driver, >that the Grappler simply converts Imagewriter LQ code to compatible >DeskJet codes. Basically, it makes the DeskJet "look" like an Imagewriter LQ. >This is an O.K. solution, but not the best one. The Imagewriter LQ has >resolution of 216x216 dpi, while the DeskJet does 300 dpi. Asside from >the possible scaling problems, it would be nice if you could get >true 300 dpi output on the DeskJet. The Grappler is also a piece of >hardware, ( extra $) which is really not necessary. This is NOT correct. What actually happens (as I understand it, remember I only live here) is that the INIT code does some stuff to the data to preprocess it but that the GRAPPLER itself does what it has to do to get the data to the HP, WITHOUT LOSS OF RESOLUTION!! This means that you always get 300dpi. > The correct solution is to write a DeskJet driver that gets >"Choosen" like the Apple drivers. Agreed (and so does the programmer!) but it was decided that due to the lack documentation on printer drivers (as you describe) that piggy backing onto the LQ driver was a good alternate plan. They are working on their own driver now, but this was a first shot, and it put the product out on the market! +---------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ + + Any thing I say may be taken as + + Leonard Rosenthol + fact, then again you might decide+ + President, LazerWare, inc. + that it really isn't, so you + + + never know, do you?? + + leonardr@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu + + + GEnie: MACgician + MacNET: MACgician + + Delphi: MACgician + + + + + +---------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu (07/11/88)
With a stopwatch you can predict how fast your printer will work. The
Imagewriter II can dump something like 350 bytes (of 9-pin data) per
second (time a screen print 512*345/8 bytes). Now, if you read the
24-pin BYTE benchmarks from 2 months ago, you find that very few
printers can approach this output speed. The one exception is the
Okidata Microline 393, which can dump 2400 bytes (of 24-pin data) per
second. This works out to slightly more square-inches per second of
printing.
Most other 24-pin printers run at 1/3 to 1/2 of the Okidata's speed.
So most 24-pin pinters are 1/3 to 1/2 as slow as the Imagewriter II,
for printing graphics bitmaps. Draft mode is better, of course.
Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,ihnp4,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillieserik@hpsadla.HP (Erik Kilk) (07/12/88)
I understand (maybe incorrectly) that the DeskJet accepts run-length encoding of bitmapped graphics. Now I hope those who write the drivers take advantage of this feature. Five minutes is a long time. Erik
fjo@ttrdf.UUCP (Frank Owen ) (07/12/88)
in article <6443@coherent.com>, dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) says: > > In article <694@ttrdf.UUCP> fjo@ttrdf.UUCP (Frank Owen ) writes: > >> I have begun working on such a >> beast, but have been discouraged by the lack of documentation from Apple >> on how to do it. > > Earle Horton's articles on his daisy-wheel driver, published in > MacTutor, may be useful. > I have looked at Earle's articles, and they are helpful. Thanks Earle. > Hmmm. I have a suspicion that the speed limitation may be due to the > fact that the driver must shove a _lot_ of data over a medium-speed > serial link. At 300 dots/inch, arbitrary bit-graphics (anything that > couldn't meaningfully be compressed) would require the transmission of > 90,000 bits per square inch... at 9600 baud, that's almost 9 seconds! > I don't know what the actual interface speed is, but I'd be a bit > surprised if it's >19,200 baud. At this speed, an 8-by-10 image of > arbitrary bit-graphics would require over 300 seconds (5 minutes) to > download the bits. > Nope. The DeskJet has a compression mode that is remarkably similiar to the compression used by MacPaint when it saves bitmaps. As a preliminary exercise, I wrote a program that scales up any PICT drawing by a factor of 4. (Using Quickdraw to do the drawing into offscreen bitmaps). The bitmap is saved in compressed mode along with DeskJet printer commands. The uncompressed representation of an entire page would take 900,000 bytes, however on my test runs the compression almost always brings this down to less than 100,000 bytes of data to send to the printer. (This includes the escape sequence overhead). Additionally, the printer can receive data at 19,200 baud. On a test run, a full-page graphic image that was compressed to 90,000 bytes took about 5 minutes to print. The transmit time for the 90,000 bytes (at 19,200 baud) should be about 47 seconds. So the transmit speed is clearly NOT the problem. >I haven't studied >HP-GL, but I infer that it contain support for both compressed >graphics Actually, only the DeskJet supports this. Other HP-GL printers (like the LaserJet II) don't have a compressed mode. >(e.g. handling solid areas of black, white, or a fixed >pattern), "cursor" positioning, and perhaps some object-oriented >capabilities as well (e.g. "draw a line from point (a,b) to point >(c,d)"). The DeskJet does NOT support these due to the fact that it is incapable of assembling a page of dots and then printing it. It is a "serial" printer in that it must print the page from top to bottom in one shot. No backing up. The graphics data must be sent to the printer from top to bottom, and the printer just puts the dots down on the page, and then forgets about them. >abilities, as well as the DJ's built-in fonts where applicable, and The built in fonts would be good for draft-mode printing, where the whole page would be done using the built in fonts. Mixing the builtin fonts with the graphics is a real pain. It can be done, but the limitations enforced by the DeskJet design make it impractical. Besides, you only get one builtin font that the driver could be sure is present. You'd (I'd) have to supply bit-mapped versions of those fonts. (not a job I particuliarly want to do). In addition, you don't get rotated fonts. The built-ins are pretty much useless aside from useing them for "Draft" mode. (In this case "Draft" may actually look pretty good. The builtin font of the DeskJet sort-of looks like your typical letter-quality daisy-wheel printer. >I'm seriously thinking of buying one of these puppies as soon as my >company has some money... I'd appreciate it if you'd keep me informed of >your efforts and discoveries. You're inability to find a driver in the market (did you talk to HP?) gives me a little motivation to finish mine. What I was planning on doing was producing a driver and approaching HP with it to possibly sell them the rights to it. (I'm not particuliarly keen on marketing and producing/selling/advertising my own product- don't have the time) I will probably finish my driver in any event, and if HP goes with Cricket, then mine will most likely show-up in the public domain. -- Frank Owen (fjo@ttrdf) 312-982-2182 AT&T Information Systems Computer Systems Division, 5555 Touhy Ave., Skokie, IL 60077 PATH: ...!att!ttrdf!fjo
bayes@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Scott Bayes) (07/13/88)
Re printer communications: HP-PCL is a Printer Control Language, the one that DeskJet, LaserJet et al. use. HP-GL is a vector Graphics Language used by HP's pen plotters (e.g. 7470, 7586, etc). I don't believe DeskJet supports HP-GL: it cannot turn vectors into rasters as far as I know. Scott "written too much code for these puppies" Bayes