gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) (06/08/91)
Freedom of the Press Light, version 3.01, a $55 postscript
interpreter (MacWareHouse). (Mac/PC) Custom Applications, Inc,
Billerica, MA 508-667-8585
This is a review of the Freedom of the Press (FOP) Postscript
Interpreter for use with an HP deskwriter (2.1 driver) and ATM 1.01.
OTHER REVIEWS. Gregory Wasson wrote a quick-clicks review of the FOP
interpreter in the Feb 91 issue of MacUser (4 mice). There was a long
review of FOP 2.1 in the Jan 1990 issue of MacUser, including samples
of the output. FOP was an editor's choice program last year, in the
May 90 issue of MacUser. I have to say that Wasson's review was a
piece of garbage. Here's why:
1. Wasson raved about how Ultrascript requires you to run
a utility to convert your ATM fonts into special files in order to
"install" them in the printer. This takes up space on your hard disk
- for each font, there is an ATM version, and an Ultrascript version.
FOP does not require this; it accepts fonts downloaded from the
laserwriter driver. The reviewer claimed this was a "major disadvantage"
of Ultrascript.
There is something major about this -- it shows the reviewer is a
major moron. With FOP you get TWO performance hits, and ONE disk
space hit every time you print a file with ATM-downloaded fonts in
them. First, there is PERFORMANCE HIT#1 when the laserwriter driver
copies the font download data from ATM files into your "Postscript0"
file on the hard disk. As you will hear later, the fonts with FOP are
inferior; you will want to use downloaded ATM fonts 100% of the time,
if you have them. Second, DISK HIT#1 occurs because each
"Postscript0" file you produce contains all these downloaded fonts; a
1-page file with 12 fonts required 700K of disk space -- you could not
afford to keep several such files on your hard disk (the same file
without downloaded fonts required 5K of disk space). Third, there is
PERFORMANCE HIT#2 when FOP reads and interprets the font in the
"Postscript0" file, (Ultrascript gets pre-interpreted "installed"
fonts straight from disk).
With FOP, you always have (1) All ATM font files, and (2) downloaded fonts
in the Postscript0 file(s). If you want to save 3 Postscript0 files
on disk (i.e. to upload to a remote laser printer, or to send to a
remote service bureau, or for archive) you almost certainly would be
using much more disk space with FOP. With Ultrascript, you could
conceivably convert all your ATM fonts to Ultrascript format, and
remove or compress the ATM files (just use the apple screen fonts).
This would always use less disk space than FOP, but it would be a
hassle to reactivate ATM (i.e. for use with deskwriter printer driver).
FOP is advertised to "work with" ATM. This means that it accepts type-1
fonts if downloaded. It DOES NOT use ATM to render fonts; it DOES NOT
derive any speed or hinting benefits from the algorithms in ATM 2.0.
FOP renders ATM fonts on its own.
2. The reviewer didn't say anything about the quality of the output.
Basically, FOP costs $50 because the fonts are not desirable. If you
read the font binary files, they are no-name products that, quite
simply, look bad (there is almost no kerning, which destroys the spacing
in your document; and many characters are downright ugly). To compound
this, there is no easy way to override the four basic FOP fonts. FOP
will not start unless these fonts are stored on your disk. I patched
the laserwriter driver to make it download ATM fonts. This slows down
FOP *even* *more*. And I have two copies of the "basic-4" fonts
whether you want them or not!
I've seen Ultrascript fonts on our QMS/Imagen printers; they look much
better to the naked eye, especially the symbol and New Century
Schoolbook fonts -- Ultrascript printer fonts to me look even better
than the Adobe Symbol and Adobe New Century Schoolbook fonts.
You say you don't like the FOP fonts and want to remove them from
your disk? Sorry, this cannot be done with FOP light.
3. The MacUser reviewer mentioned that printing was a 1-step
process in both Ultrascript and in FOP. Wrong wrong wrong.
If your deskwriter must be connected to your printer port then it is
a 5-step process!!! AAAARRRGH!!!! I need my modem port for my
telecom software (RR9.4) which doesn't work with the printer port.
So my "1-step printing" is actually "6-step printing":
1. Turn the deskwriter off or unplug it because the chooser
laserwriter dialogue will write junk onto the appletalk port
which is printed on my deskwriter and wastes gobs of ink.
2. Choose Laserwriter in chooser
3. Print file in application
4. Turn on Deskwriter
5. Unchoose laserwriter in chooser {so FOP can initialize}
6. Go to FOP and print the file.
Custom Applications, inc. knows about the problem and is *NOT*
working on a solution (it says in the manual that deskwriter users
must use the other port). Has anyone experienced this problem with
Ultrascript? Ultrascript includes an init, which may (presumably)
patch the appletalk driver at boot time, bypassing the problem.
On the other hand, suppose you *could* hook your printer to the modem
port, to get "1-step" printing. Often I keep a remote terminal
session on my modem 100% of the time, and would probably read
notesfiles while printing locally . But in step 2 above the
laserwriter driver would write junk to your modem, possibly ruining
your session! The interface between Laserwriter <-> FOP spooler
is poor and needs some major redesign.
Based on the flaws in Wasson's review, I'm not sure which is better:
The FOP interpreter at $55, or the Imagen Ultrascript interpreter at
$110.
------------------------- REVIEW FOLLOWS --------------------------
SETUP (5 stars). There is an installer that puts everything you need
on your disk. The program must be in the blessed System Folder or it
will not run. Laserwriter 6.0.1 driver is included.
OUTPUT QUALITY (2.5 stars, would be higher but for fonts)
(1) Line drawings printed well but hairlines seemed to be drawn
with quickdraw, resulting in some flakiness (diagonal lines
that varied in width from 2-3 pixels look bad; they look better
on our QMS/Imagen Ultrascript 3380 printer (300dpi)). Lines
widths are incorrectly computed; half point vertical lines are
drawn 3 pixels wide at 300dpi, but 2 pixels wide by HP's
deskwriter driver; this is clearly an error in FOP light.
(2) Characters rotated well and printed well
(3) A dithered 300dpi color mathematica plot, exported to canvas,
printed perfectly using the 6.01 laserwriter drivers.
(4) The symbol font looks bad bad bad. The times font looks almost
as bad as the new TrueType New York font. It only takes 5 seconds
to spot the bad kerning in the Jan 90 MacUser output samples!
(5) An overstrike of a vertical bar (subscript 5 pts) and a vertical
left-ceiling character (superscript 5 points) printed misaligned (by 1
three hundred dpi dot). This should produce a "big" vertical
ceiling character. It printed correctly with the HP quickdraw
deskwriter driver, on an Apple Laserwriter, and on an QMS/Imagen
Ultrascript printer. It happened with both the FOP fonts and
the ATM fonts. I concluded it was a rounding bug in the
mathematics of FOP.
ROBUSTNESS (4 stars). I would say the interpreter (version 3.01) is
relatively bug-free. I have experienced no crashes, one hang, and no
serious bugs in the printed output. The interpreter will not print
mathematica postscript; the manual says "this is a mathematica problem."
This is probably false; mathematica output prints correctly on many
other printers, including the laserwriter and QMS/Imagen 3320 + Ultrascript.
SPEED (2 mice). The interpreter is remarkably slow. On a Mac II
running System 7.0 using the 68881 version of the interpreter, a page
takes about 4.5 minutes to print. FOP writes a log of all pages
printed; these times were taken from the log. These times do not
include the time to generate the page with the laserwriter dialogue!
Expect to average 5+ minutes/page throughput! When printing 2 copies
of the same page, it took a long time to print the second copy, about
twice as long as with the deskwriter 2.1 driver. With 3 Mb of RAM the
interpreter did not increase in speed. I pity anyone with a Mac Plus
or low memory.
VERSATILITY (3 mice).
+ The interpreter allows you to preview at 72dpi,
- It does not allow preview at the resolution of your printer (i.e. 300dpi)
- It does not allow you to store the bitmap result of a preview.
- It does not allow you to convert a postscript picture to a
PICT even though it would probably not be hard to add this capability
to the software.
- It does not allow you type commands interactively into the postscript
interpreter, hence, it is clumsy for interactive postscript debugging.
+ It can drive a deskwriter by itself, or drive it as a quickdraw
device through HP's driver. As a quickdraw device it can drive the
deskwriter in 150dpi faster mode.
+ Custom Laser prep (.ppd) files are included for Adobe Illustrator /
Separator, Aldus Pagemaker, Letraset Design Studio, Quark XPress,
ReadySetGo. These supposedly improve output quality.
+ The software directly supports about 50 printers, among them:
All epson dot-matrix (for some you must buy a serial interface)
Epson EPL-6000 Laser
HP Deskjet, Deskjet+, Deskwriter, PaintJet, PaintJet XL,
PaintWriter, Laser Jet II, IIP, IID, -2000, III.
Apple Imagewriter II, Laserwriter IISC
Toshiba 351SX
IBM Pro Printer X24, Quickwriter, 4019 LaserPrinter
Panasonic KX series
Canon BJ-130, BJ-130e, LBP series
Any other quickdraw printer with a working chooser printer driver is
supported. FOP renders the postscript as a bitmap and prints the
bitmap via the quickdraw driver. Results are identical.
+ It is easy to modify the postscript prologue files provided with
FOP (of course, the crummy manual doesn't say a word about what these
files are or when they are loaded)
The interpreter successfully ran the "multips" postscript prologue;
this prologue causes the postscript program to print several logical
pages on 1 physical page, saving paper. "multips" ran with a sample
postscript file. However, I have never found a prologue that will
work with the mac laserprep, even on Imagen/Ultrascript, and multips
was no exception -- it hung the interpreter.
Can it run the distillps postscript simplifying program? I'll try
to find out later.
DOCUMENTATION (1.5 mice). The 80-page manual is functional but poor.
The chapters are (1) floppy installation, (2) configuring FOP (3)
configuring your printer (4) printing a file (5) known bugs. Only
about 25-30 pages of the manual are useful information, because so
much of the manual describes the use of FOP with other types of
printers. Information about your printer is scattered throughout the
manual, and on disk in the FOP application help dialogue and the FOP
release notes (TeachText).
The manual does not tell you anything technical or useful about the
postscript engine itself or its capabilities or limitations or speed.
It does not tell you anything about the fonts, or how to change /
substitute fonts. It does not tell you what is going on when there is
a bug. The manual is aimed at the illiterate technophobe. To their
credit, there is a (non-800) technical support phone number and a
checklist to follow before you call for help.
CONCLUSION (3.5 mice).
* Why use HP's Deskwriter Driver? In most cases, the Deskwriter
driver, with ATM or with the included high-quality CS/ITC fonts,
produces equivalent line drawings and better looking fonts than FOP
and it's 5 times faster.
* Why buy FOP? FOP makes an ok 72dpi postscript previewer. It is
great for people who have no other means of viewing a postscript file
they have acquired. It is useful for printing halftones of Color
Quickdraw Pictures at 300dpi. FOP can print color on dot-matrix
printers that support color.
* Why buy a postscript interpreter? Old drawings that have been
aligned to print correctly on a postscript printer may require a
postscript interpreter (this was a problem of mine, due to MacDraw
II). This is because there are serious flaws in the QuickDraw
architecture, that occur if you draw aligned graphics (Rectangle,
RoundRect, Oval, Arc, and Region), export them to another word
processor, and expect to print them aligned at 300dpi. Postscript (or
an exclusive reliance on Polygons & Lines for aligned graphics) does
not have these mathematical design flaws.
Some applications (illustrator) insist on printing at 72dpi, except
when they are speaking to the laserwriter driver. Postscript can get
higher resolution output from these applications (there is a list of them,
including adobe illustrator, in the deskwriter manual supplement card).
* Why avoid FOP? Because of the low quality of the outline fonts,
FOP alone is unsuitable for producing camera-ready documents. FOP's 4
basic fonts are inferior and to overcome this drawback, you must (1)
purchase ATM, and (2) hack the laserwriter driver with ResEdit to
download ATM fonts, and (3) suffer even longer printing times. FOP
does not render lines as uniformly or correctly as Adobe's Postscript
or QMS/Imagen's Ultrascript software on "real" laser printers. I now
realize it is important to check the source of the outline fonts when
buying ANY postscript interpreter. FOP with FOP's plus pack fonts is
$55 + 98 = $153. You may be happier spending $110 + $110 = $220 on
Ultrascript light + ATM plus pack fonts (you don't need ATM itself).
The potential benefits may be better fonts, faster printing, and fewer
bugs: Can anyone confirm this?
Disclaimer: I have not used ultrascript/mac, I only have experience
with the ultrascript/4.1 and ultrascript/5.0 that runs on imagen printers.
Don Gillies | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
gillies@cs.uiuc.edu | Digital Computer Lab, 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana IL
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