RCDILAA@HDETUD1.BITNET (03/10/88)
Date: 10 March 1988, 16:35:29 MET
From: Hans van der Laan +31 15 785016 RCDILAA at HDETUD1
To: LASER-LOVERS at BRILLIG.UMD
Sorry for duplicate postings! This is a multi-facetted problem.
We are planning a printing service. "We" is the combination of
(a) the Computing Centre and (b) the Central Printing Office of the
Delft University of Technology. Up to now both operate
independently. Both produce printed matter, with differing
characteristics:
(a) Low quality, low volume, short delivery times;
(b) High quality, medium to high volume, long (oops)
delivery times.
Users are producing printed matter more and more on themselves,
desktop publishing (or something they give that name) is
spreading rapidly. We think they still want to pay for high
quality, high volume, output which is finished the way they
want (double sided, binded, packed, etcetera).
The university is running a broadband Ethernet based campus wide
network: DUneT. Suppose we would decide (A) to hang a big
"printer" at the network directly, that printer should be
spoken to in Postscript, I suppose. Users would send files
directly to that address.
Or: suppose we would decide (B) to connect the "printer" to our
mainframe (IBM 3083, running VM/CMS). Users would direct their
output to a virtual machine.
"Printer" stands for a printing service. Laserprinter(?)
(300 dots per inch? 600?), and IBM 4250(?) or photosetter(?)
We already use a Xerox 2700 for low volume, medium quality
output, still going strong. We intend to keep using it.
Now:
(A) In a way this possibility (up and running anywhere?) looks
very versatile. But it seems very difficult to handle
priorities and workload, and accounting.
(B) In another way a very comforting possibility: we would
keep our hands on it, accounting is easy.
A few questions now:
(A) We did hear a rumor of existing hardware to join printer
and Ethernet. Which brand? Does it accept Postscript?
(B) Is Postscript to printer software available?
Is TEX for IBM mainframe available?
(C) Some of you already running this sort of shop?
(D) Laserprinter: Xerox (300 DPI)? Siemens (600 DPI)?
IBM coming at the Hannover Messe with something new?
(Latest rumor: they didn't succeed in buying Siemens'
laserprinter?).
(E) Why not put PC with laserprinter combinations at the
faculty buildings, so users can locally preview their
output? Question still lingering: "do they really
want high quality?". I am convinced the answer is "yes".
Well, I suppose this story is not very detailed, but I can
- and should like to - answer questions. Any ideas?
Thank you for any reactions.
Hans van der Laan Bitnet: rcdilaa@hdetud1
Delft University of Technology
Computing Centre
Postbus 354
2600 AJ Delft"Richard_Southall.EuroPARC"@XEROX.COM (03/18/88)
Your problem sounds very much like the one faced, and allegedly successfully tackled, by London University. They have a campus-wide (and it sure is a wide campus!) network using JANET, local PostScript desktop printers, and a high-quality PostScript typesetter in the UL Computer Centre. They must have dealt with the accounting problems that concern you. I don't know whether their Computer Centre offers the "print finishing" services that your Central Printing Office does. Contact Richard Simpson at the Warburg Institute, who is my source of information on all this. I'm sorry I don't have a more detailed address for him here. Richard Southall