briand@tekig4.TEK.COM (Brian Diehm) (06/24/87)
Rumors continue unabated in the press about Apple bringing out a low-cost
LaserWriter without PostScript. Target price appears to be <$2000. It would
have a built-in QuickDraw RIP.
Current LaserWriters, if I understand correctly, use PostScript. The Laser Prep
file is automatically sent by the system to define a series of PostScript
"macros" that support QuickDraw primitives.
Upon hearing about this, I thought "Wow, this gets me into the ballpark!"
But further contemplation makes me think maybe this is a real dog. For example,
the reason the output of Adobe Illustrator is neat is because it does not limit
the process to the simple things QuickDraw can do. Even something simple like
PageMaker uses a different prep file (Aldus Prep) to support, among other
things, hairlines. These are presented as 1/300 inch wide, whereas QuickDraw
is limited to the 1-point (1/72 inch) minimum. Hence, all QuickDraw lines are
relatively thick, and only get thicker in pretty large increments.
Another loss is the types of screening ("halftone" shading or gray levels) that
can be produced. Quickdraw again is limited to 1-point spots, although the LWs
to date can smooth. Thus, the best 50% gray that can be produced is a very
coarse grid. If in addition you are using some odd enlargement factor (100% is
an "odd" factor; 98% is an exact 4x linear increase in resolution) then this
gray shade can make for very bizarre lines of 50% density.
Also, the LW with its resolution provides for excellent representation of
angled lines, curves, and circles. I would expect that a QuickDraw based printer
would also print these at maximum resolution, but is that certain?
Finally, and this is the swinging factor for me, WOULD SUCH A PRODUCT HAVE
DECENT FONTS, or would it be limited to the current bit-mapped screen fonts?
If you print out, say, Geneva or New York WITHOUT FONT SUBSTITUTION on the
current LW, you can see the best that such a product might do. As I understand
it, the built-in fonts of the LW and LW+ are PostScript designs based on Bezier
curves that can only be interpreted by PostScript (or equivalent). Certainly,
QuickDraw cannot do a decent interpretation!!! In fact, the above demon-
stration may produce better results than you could expect from a cheap printer
because the current LW and LW+ base their bitmap representations upon the
LARGEST bitmap version of that font. Thus, if your system has a 36-point New
York in it, your 12-pt New York output will benefit. But if such a printer is
consistent with the words "no PostScript" and "QuickDraw," it will have only
the screen fonts supported. No Times, Courier, Helvetica, or Symbol. None of
the additional LW+ fonts. AND no possible way to utilize those beautiful PS
fonts from, say, CasadyWare, like Micro or Prelude Script. No, all you would
get would be what you can run straight out to your ImageWriter and edit with
FONTastic Plus.
If this last limitation is real, what such a LW would be is only a marginal
print quality improvement on the ImageWriter, and almost NO gain in func-
tionality (a loss if you consider IW II color). I say marginal print quality
improvement because the LW is fraught with many of the same demons that plague
all xerography processes - graying out of large black areas, uneven toner
deposition (on the Canon engine, it often fades out the edges of the page
while the center is good, and shaking the cartridge does not always help), and
smears, jams, and other annoyances shared with IWs.
So, is this product a waste of Apple's time? If it is, and we say so loud
enough on this net, maybe the product planners there will get wind of it. The
reports I've heard imply that this one is not a clear call within Apple either,
and that there are armed camps with their own perceptions of the market. By
providing YOUR views in this group, we can function as some sort of informal
market survey!
--
-Brian Diehm (SDA - Standard Disclaimers Apply)
Tektronix, Inc.
briand@tekig4.TEK.COM or {decvax,cae780,uw-beaver}!tektronix!tekig4!brianenceoster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (06/24/87)
A cheap LW with only postscript could still be quite a nice product,
for any Macintosh owner with a hard disk:
1.) QuickDraw only draws in pixels, but quickdraw doesn't care how big
a pixel is: It is easy to have the printer driver tell the application
that the canvas is 300dpi instead of 72dpi, and, if the application
follows Apple's guidlines it will do the right thing.
2.) Some applications don't follow apple's guidlines, and won;t be
able to correctly draw on a 8"x10" page at 300 dpi. For these
applications, you still get lines and arcs out of the printer that are
drawn with 300 dpi pixels, not 72 (laserwriter size (almost invisible)
jaggies, not imagewriter size.)
3.) An example of this is the "best" quality drawing mode that the
imagewriter driver supports. it provides type (1) drawing for
applications that can handle it and type (2) drawing for the rest.
4.) Well what about text? PostScript represents a font family as a set
of spline equations, and QuickDraw as whatever the font manager tells
it it is. One could, in theory, write a font manager that used an
internal spline representation, but let's just talk about what is
easy. The current font manager stores a font as a bitmap. When you
print at a different size resolution than the screen, the font manager
and quickdraw cooperate to do font substitution, i.e. they pick a
bitmap that will do a better job. You see this all the time in "best"
quality printing on the imagewriter: 12 point text gets printed using
not the 12 point, screen font bitmap, but the 24 point bitmap, because
it is a better match to the 144dpi environment of the imagewriter in
best mode. If you want good text on the laser writer, all that needs
to happen is somebody needs to draw it and sell it. Big bitmap fonts
are currently bulky, so the user will want a hard disk very fast, but
you can by a lot of hard disk for the difference in price between this
rumored laser printer and a LaserWriter Plus.
What would you really lose? Well, any application that emits
postscript and also draws on the screen, should work just fine on this
new printer: if it can draw on the screen at 72dpi, it has all the
smarts it needs to draw on the printer at 300. Any application that
just emits postscript, and doesn't do any screen drawing ("just text"
for example, as I understand it.) won't work.
I expect that the current crop of postscript emitting products will
need an upgrade to handle the new printer: blindness and expediency, a
lack of printers to test on, and Apple providing no clear way to
discover whther a printer has postscript or not
kept the developers from really following apple's guidlines for
writing a printing program. I kind of expect that Adobe will not
upgrade "Illustrator" to work with non-postscript printers.
I've been thinking about putting together a company that takes this
one step further: You all ready have a machine that executes
QuickDraw, why buy a second? I want to sell a memory upgrade and a
laser printer on a SCSI port. When you print, the Printer Manager
calls the Memory manager to allocate a 1 Meg buffer. Quickdraw draws
directly into a buffer in the Mac, and when it is done, my product
just pumps bits directly to the writing laser.
advantages:
1.) Cheap, 'cause it uses
the mac to do all the drawing.
2.) Fast, 'cause it transfers bits direct
from main memory to paper. (No waiting for postscript to figure out
what QuickDarw already knows). Now, Quickdraw draws the page, ships it
over a serial link much slower than my DMA channel to another computer
in the LaserWriter that draws it a second time. With my scheme
QuickDraw draws it once, and the printer is ready to roll.
3.) When you aren't printing, that Meg of memory could be used for
something else (for example, the cache could go there, and I
automatically flush the cache before you start to print.)
I figure I'm worth 15% for the idea
plus my software, but I haven't been able to get Canon to take me
seriously enough to sell me printer engines.
Maybe people should write Apple not to knock a QuickDraw only
laserwriter, but to tell them to fund me doing this :-)
--- David Phillip Oster --My Good News: "I'm a perfectionist."
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --My Bad News: "I don't charge by the hour."
Uucp: {seismo,decvax,...}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edujww@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Joel West) (06/26/87)
First, let me say I have no inside information, only three years of
experience as a Mac owner speculating on Apple's plans. :-)
Clearly the new printer has to have decent fonts or it's out of the
question. As long as fonts can be referenced symbolically
(rather than just as bitmaps), I don't think it really matters whether a
laserprinter has PS or not -- it's a separate issue.
Speculation is that PS adds $300-$500 to the cost of a LaserWriter.
Apple contributed 56% of Adobe's revenue in the last quarter.
Apple designed a pretty good graphics system -- QuickDraw -- that
only seemed feeble when PostScript came along and obsoleted
just about everything. From a technical standpoint, there's no
reason why the five-year-old QuickDraw couldn't be updated to
fix a few small problems and make a laserprinter nearly as good--
without the license.
I think those (like Cricket) who assume that PostScript-only
is the wave of the future are likely to be drown. Apple has
promised (and the current software guarantees) that QuickDraw
will always be with us, but has never said anything of the sort
for PostScript.
Also, Apple is a very proud company that likes to innovate: I was
reminded of this looking at the Din-8 connectors, Din-3 (for AppleTalk),
ADB and the cabling for the Mac II monitors. Given a choice between
a slightly problematic PostScript and the opportunity to have a
new, improved Apple-defined QuickDraw, I would bet on Apple
spending the time to fix up QuickDraw.
Who knows? Perhaps they've done it already and not told anyone... :=)
--
Joel West
{ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!jww or jww@sdcsvax.ucsd.edukleef@cs.vu.nl (Patrick van Kleef) (06/29/87)
In article <19461@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster) writes: > >A cheap LW with only postscript could still be quite a nice product, >for any Macintosh owner with a hard disk: > >I've been thinking about putting together a company that takes this >one step further: You all ready have a machine that executes >QuickDraw, why buy a second? I want to sell a memory upgrade and a >laser printer on a SCSI port. > >--- David Phillip Oster --My Good News: "I'm a perfectionist." >Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --My Bad News: "I don't charge by the hour." >Uucp: {seismo,decvax,...}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu Sounds to me like you re-invented the Atari Laserprinter (to be). ;-) . . . . [sorry, you know the problem] . .
krm@aluxz.UUCP (Kurt Marko) (06/29/87)
In article <1604@tekig4.TEK.COM> briand@tekig4.TEK.COM (Brian Diehm) writes: >Rumors continue unabated in the press about Apple bringing out a low-cost >LaserWriter without PostScript. Target price appears to be <$2000. It would >have a built-in QuickDraw RIP. > >So, is this product a waste of Apple's time? If it is, and we say so loud >enough on this net, maybe the product planners there will get wind of it. The >reports I've heard imply that this one is not a clear call within Apple either, >and that there are armed camps with their own perceptions of the market. By >providing YOUR views in this group, we can function as some sort of informal >market survey! > I couldn't agree more! I hope the Apple people are listening. Apple showed great vision by adopting PostScript as the page description language for the LaserWriter, and as such, turning PS into the "standard" PDL for new laser printers. Just as a lot of software is now available which supports PS (both importing PS files and writing PS output), I would hate to see Apple back away from this standard just to trim a few bucks off of the price of the printer. The beauty of PS is that once I have my graphics information in PS, I know I can print it on anything from a LW (or QMS, or TI, or ...) to a Linotronic. Please, Apple, I would like to see the price of LWs go down (I'd love to have one at home!), but not at the price of PostScript compatibility. Kurt Marko {ihnp4,ulysses,...}!aluxz!krm
dorner@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu.UUCP (07/07/87)
I think apple (or somebody) needs two new laser printers. The aforementioned cheap PostScript printer, and also a 68020 based one (for somewhat more than the current one, probably). The current laserwriter is tremendously underpowered. Steve Dorner