sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten) (12/31/87)
Hi gang. I know this has been covered before, but when it was I didn't have a friend who needed the information. Actually I had the friend, but... So what I need to know is: How can my friend make some use out of his fancy-shmancy 8 pen HP color plotter? The folks in his office are converting over to Macs from the PC world (yea!), but they'd still like color output for stuff like organizational charts, graphs and the like. 1) Are there programs out there that directly support color output and/or the plotter (i.e., spreadsheets, presentation packages, etc.)? 2) Are there plotter drivers available for use with those programs that otherwise only support the standard Apple printers? I seem to remember something about a company called SoftWorks (?) in Hawaii of all places, but I can't find out anything more about them. Maybe I dreamed it... :-) Please send your responses to me, and I'll post a summary to the net. Thanks for your help. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." ...!cmcl2!esquire!sbb | - David Letterman
twakeman@hpcea.CE.HP.COM (Teriann Wakeman) (01/01/88)
There are a couple of plotter drivers available that will allow a Mac to output to a HP plotter.The one that you were thinking of is from a company called Softstyle. From all the reports I get from people in HP using the Softstyle driver, it isn't a very satisfactory application. The one I use here at work is MACPLOTSII from Computer Shoppe. It is a very good driver. I have used it on both the small and large plotters with no problems. MACPLOTSII will plot from clipboard OR from drawings saved in PICT format. Computershoppe's driver supports hidden lines and pen changes (read that as colour). MacPlots II comes in two flavours: The buisness version that supports all the small HP desktop plotters (WITH RS-232 PORTS ONLY!) and the more expensive Drafting version that supports both the rs-232 desktop HP plotters but the floor big floor standing HP plotters. The documentation isn't the best but phone support is the best I have ever seen. Considering the Macs great graphic abilities, I'm supprised that everyone dosn't have a HP plotter (yes this last sentence was a comercial) If you can make it to MacWorld, stop off at the Hewlett-Packard booth and see what What HP plotters can do with a Mac's output. Sorry about the commercial but as a HP employee and an Enthusiastic Mac user since '84 (both at home and at work) who does a lot of graphics and large wall charts I think Macs & HP plotters are a powerful combination. MacPlottsII (no connection to HP or myself) is deffinatly the driver of choice TeriAnn Wakeman HP Corporate Quality HPMUG co-ordinator (415)857-5057 Opps I almost forgot, If your dealer dosn't carry it or won't order it, Computer Shoppe, PO box 18344, Greensboro, NC 27429 (919)299-4843
stephens@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Greg Stephens) (01/01/88)
I have used to plotter drivers for the Mac (PlotStart and MacPlots II) and would recommend MacPlots II. However, I find that plotter support on the Mac is one of the Mac's biggest weaknesses over PC's. One of the major reasons is font support. The Mac plotter drivers only support the imbeded stick font that the HP plotters have. MacPlots II has a way of specifying colors for items within MacDraw and other drawing programs. After the drawing is done you group together all of the items that you want to be a specific color with a option-n item that you enter someplace in the drawing. The effect is that if you type and option-3 (a delta will appear in MacDraw), everything grouped together with that item will be plotted with pen 3. For my purposes, plotting of presentation graphics, I cannot use the Mac and have to revert to using a PC with Drawing Gallery or Windows Draw to get the 'pretty' fonts and use the full features of the plotter (as I recall, the MacPlotter drivers don't handle line thickness very well either).