chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach; Lord of the OtherRealms) (11/20/86)
A while ago, I sent out a note asking for help on a number of laserwriter related questions. I got LOTS of answers -- thank you! Since others may well have similar questions, I'm summarizing what I found out. My comments are [bracketed] and everyone elses are in semi-random order. Since a lot of people wrote in with the same information, I'll pulled all the names and taken representative comments to keep the size reasonable. Thanks to everyone for the information and the help. > First of all, am I going to have trouble hooking it up to my system? I'm > currently running a Paradise hard disk off of the printer port, an > Imagewriter/Thunderscan and a modem off of an A/B switch on the modem port. > Appletalk also plugs into the modem port, right? ... >(note: since the LW can't do mailing labels, I can't completely retire the >Imagewriter, although the Thunderscan may be retired soon). [Appletalk plugs into the printer port. In my specific case, I can plug the paradise into the modem port, so there is no problem. It is also possible to A/B switch Appletalk and a modem of the printer port, but I've been warned not to put modem control stuff out Appletalk, as it might make life interesting. The long term 'fix' is to upgrade to a mac+ and get a SCSI disk, but the current siuation is workable without the Thunderscanner. This is no big deal, since I find the Thunderscanner doesn't really do what I need it to do -- I'm going to look for a firm that has a 300dpi scanner I can rent time on instead. Oh, I was very wrong on the fact that the LW can't do labels. It can, and you can get sheets of labels that can be hand fed into it. So I probably won't need to keep the Imagewriter (one less toy to cable in...)] > Question #2. How well in reality does bitmapped (i.e. MacPaint) art and > graphics reproduce? Am I (as an example) going to want to upgrade to > SuperPaint so I can do Postscript graphics? Has anyone played with the > new Postscript clip art starting to come out? Is SuperPaint better than > MacDraw? What are the tradeoffs? With the new LaserWriter drivers (which have been out for a few months now) bitmapped graphics, like MacPaint graphics, will come out beautifully. They finally implemented the printing right, so you can tell the LaserWriter that you'd like your MacPaint bitmaps smoothed, or not. As far as reproduction quality, you've nothing to worry about. I haven't tried SuperPaint, so I can't comment on it. I use MacDraw for any drawing tasks I have, since I generally don't deal with bitmapped images. On the Laserwriter, MacDraw produces some of the most fantastic output I've ever seen. It's pretty compatible with MacPaint, so you can paste in a bitmap from MacPaint, and mess around with it, and print it out... ================= MacPaint images pasted into true LW pages look pretty poor -- the larger dots really leap out at you. What you could do is paste them in at 1 Mac pixel to 1 LW pixel (they would come out 1/4 the size), but I have no idea how you do this. The latest issue of 'Colophon', Adobe Systems' News Publication, says that it used GrayPaint(tm) software from Fractal Software; I imagine this lets you work with bitmaps at the high resolution of the LW. There's also a product called Bill's Ultimate Bitmap Editor, or something, which simplifies editing 300dpi stuff. It was mentioned in some recent Mac magazine (MacUser? Macazine?). You need a special bitmap editor because at 300dpi it's incredibly time- consuming to work on a dots by dots basis. ================= Macpaint won't print any worse then on the imagewriter. The one thing is until you get a laserwriter you don't realize how bad (+ noisy) the image writer is. In fact if you turn on smoothing, the lw will make somethings look better. BUT 300dpi lines are NEAT. ================= the main problem with the LaserWriter is that programs such as MacDraw do not align the bitmaps properly with object text, no WYSIWYG. SuperPaint does. No program is practical for editing 300 dpi bitmaps, unless it includes AI. You can certainly do it with SuperPaint, but it will take all day (according to the president of Silicon Beach) to do anything sizable, so it seems most appropriate for recurring artwork. In short, 72 dpi bitmaps from MacPaint or FullPaint turn into 75 dpi bitmaps, shrunk 4%. What a LaserWriter means is that you use MacDraw or SuperPaint to draw objects whereever possible. I'm using MacDraw and SuperPaint for my book, but MacDraw has a number of annoying bugs (e.g., it remembers fonts by position, not name or number, so if you read a doc on another system disk, all your fonts have changed!) and made some illustrations with SuperPaint that could have not been done with either {Mac,Full}Paint or MacDraw. I will use SuperPaint exclusively once I get 1.0; the only thing missing now is align to grid, which I use all the time, particularly for sizing boxes. For using the LaserWriter, you can't beat object manipulation in FatBits-style. ================= You will definitely want to use a program such as Draw to get the maximum quality from drawings on the Laserwriter. I write papers for my Microeconomics Theory class here that usually have several graphs with lines and arcs illustrating the point I am making, and I will never go back to Paint for this kind of stuff for output on the Laserwriter. You see, if you use bit-mapped graphics, which are 72dpi (I think), you can't take advantage of the Laserwriter's outstanding 300dpi resolution. And it makes a huge difference. I don't know about Superpaint, but MacDraw yields really professional quality illustrations on the Laserwriter. As for your letterhead, why not design one in MacDraw using the Laser fonts? It should look really nice with the Laserwriter's high resolution. ================= I think that SuperPaint is pretty neat. Especially the LaserBits stuff. I think that it is easily better than MacDraw if you want to be doing things where it is useful to have both a bitmap layer and an object layer. Especially when you want to do some really deatailed bitmaps for printing on the Laser. > Question #3. Does anyone know of a grahics librarian for PICT stuff? > Picturebase (?) does it for macpaint bitmap stuff, but not for macdraw > format graphics. Am I stuck with the Scrapbook for now? [Editorial comment. Bad choice of words. What I meant to ask about was macdraw object (not PICT) format, which nobody to date supports.] Picturebase is one. I don't know of others. Why would you be stuck with the Scrapbook? Why not just store them as MacPaint pictures. If you do use SuperPaint, MacPublisher, or what have you, there's a DA that allows you to copy from any MacPaint file from anywhere, so... ================= Both Microsoft File and Business Filevision will store PICT stuff. I have not extensive experience with File and PICTS, so there might be some hidden problems. WIth Business Filevision, however, I am sure that this works fine (that's becasue I designed Business Filevision and wrote the part that files PICTs - so if it doesn't really work for you you will know who to complain to!). I believe the street price on either of these programs is under $200. > Question #4. What are your favorite laser fonts? Now that I'm not going > to be limited to 72dpi, I want to pick up a few distinctive typefaces for > some of my stuff. I particularly would like to find a good London style > Old English font, if it exists. What other fonts are available, and > which ones do you like? Call up Adobe (800)45-ADOBE to ask for a brochure on fonts and find your nearest font dealer. I would advise against going with anyone else's fonts unless you really see all of them at a lot of different styles and sizes. Poorly designed LW fonts look even worse than all the ImageWriter junk fonts. There is an article in the Nov 12th Bay Area Mac Classifieds on 'Unusual Type Effects with Downloadable Fonts' (together with some ugly sample fonts). With an ordinary LW you can only download 2 fonts per document (2 per text block in Page Maker), so if you want to use lots of fancy fonts, you should think about getting a LW+. If you buy a font designer program, you can in theory put somewhat sophisticated clip art in the font, and bypass MacDraw/MacPaint altogether. All the Adobe fonts are good looking. ITC Lubalin Graph is kinda techy, Optima is cool, ITC Souvenir and Palatino are easy to read... have fun! ================= The only one I've tried is Bodoni from the Cassady folks. I wasn't all that impresses. I read somewhere that there are now over 100 PostScript fonts, so... ================= Since I do a lot of technical writing, my preferred font is Times 14. It's not distinctive, but it is easy to read. Keep in mind that with the new drivers, ANY Macintosh font can be downloaded, so if you have some really nifty public-domain font, you don't have to worry. It'll look as good, and in many cases better, than what you see on the screen. So go ahead and use your London, and enjoy... New Century Schoolbook, or Optima (you have to buy this from Adobe though). Garramond is big as shit, and will not all load into the laserwriter with laser prep. Remember, A LaserWriter requires the space for the LaserPrep file, unless you run JustText, which cranks pure postcript. ================= By all means be sure to get the *complete* set of Apple laserwriter fonts. They are professionally designed fonts, and far better than any of the other fonts I've seen. My favorite font is "Palatino", which is a Roman font with serifs and a somewhat rounded, "modern" look to it (but the serifs make it look much better than a lot of the sans-serif modern fonts). The "N Helvetica" (narrow helvetica) is also good for captioning figures. There is also a font called "ZAPF Dingbats" which contains a lot of professionally-designed dingbats. For some reason the existence of these fonts is not well-known around here, so they may be hard to find without searching. I found them on one of the Software Supplement disks (*not* the "Printer Install" disk) which simply says "LaserWriter Fonts: Macintosh Format--Single Sided, (C) Feb. 1986 Apple Computer, Inc." and which says (in the Get Info box) "Laserwriter Fonts 1.0". One of our folks here who keeps track of all the disks claims that some of the fonts are out of date, and he thought maybe those were, but they have worked fine for me on our LaserWriter Plus. The really good fonts are in the file called "Laserwriter Plus Fonts". It may be that the disk also comes with the Laserwriter nowadays since I notice our Laserwriter Plus manual has the copyright information on those fonts in it. > Question #5. What do you recommend for things like custom font/logo/graphic > design? If I want to develop my own font characters and dingbats, what > should I look at using, assuming I want PostScript and not bitmap characters? Fontographer wins for font design. You create a font in terms of its outline, and you have an assortment of straight segments, curves, and angles with which to build your font. > Question the last. With the laserwriter coming in, I'm thinking it would > be a Good Thing to start using honest letterhead instead of pinfeed with a > bitmap letterhead logo for stuff. Any suggestions on kinds of paper (also > colors and tints ) that work well in a laserwriter? What sort of thigns > should I plan on avoiding (textured papers, for instance...). Does the > printer have trouble with heavy (say 20lb) paper? The printer can handle VERY heavy paper. How about 40lb? No prob! It's just the very light stuff that I'd aviod. Also, take care to not have any BIG swaths of black, as the Xero-graphic engine doesn't like it very well. While I haven't done too much with heavy paper, or anything really strange, I have printed a bit on lightly textured bond paper (weight unknown) without any problems. I would want to stay away from anything extra-heavy or extra-rough textured.. I would recommend you try some extreme cases, and see what happens.... We have put ALL kinds of paper into our machine, from overhead slides to heavy J-Card paper (J Cards are cassette inserts for tapes) with no problem. For thick paper, some adjustment might be needed on the manual feed, but it should hav little problem. ================= I need to print disk labels for a project and created the design using MacDraw. Then using Avery full sheet labels (#5455), these are 8.5x11 inches, I single sheet feed them through the Laserwriter. Worked like a champ. I also need to print manual covers, using some 110 pound paper (more like card board), i single sheet feed the covers through with great results. ================= Our new version of Word for the Macintosh allows imbedding of PostScript in an "intelligent" manner (i.e., it recognizes the postscript and handles it properly, although I am not sure exactly how it works). I have seen some really interesting 3-D letterheads done using Postscript in Word 3.0, though. [editorial note: ReadySetGo3.0 also is supposed to have what is known as a PostScript window so you can program graphics directly in PostScript for your page layout, too] -- Chuq Von Rospach chuq%plaid@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!sun!plaid!chuq The azure sun beat down upon my face, fluffly white clouds skittered their way across the scintilating sky, and this moment could have been nominated for perfection if it wasn't for that giant leech attached to my thigh.
tenney@well.UUCP (Glenn S. Tenney) (11/21/86)
Sorry to have not answered much earlier, but here is a quick comment: I used a MacPlus and Laserwriter for a month (I've had my Mac for quite a while). The ONLY problem I encountered was that MacPaint could *NOT* be printed using manual feed (or any other options normally found using page setup). I had a drawing I wanted to print on very heavy stock and just was not able to do it! Ok, I could cut it and paste into a draw doc, but be serious! Glenn Tenney