[comp.lang.postscript] HP LJII and Postscript

regan@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Kenneth Regan) (12/20/89)

In an earlier article, I asked about available PostScript options for
this setup in my office:

<80386 PC 1Mb>---parallel---<HP LJ II 2.5Mb>---?serial?---<Sun SparcI>

From the e-mailed responses, and articles I've read in the past two weeks
(one of the DTP mags has a review of the QMS JetScript board and short 
takes of Freedom of Press, GoScript, and the Pacific Page cartridge),
the results seem to be:

	(1) Pacific Page will let one print from either machine, and
over a network in general.  (The Pacific Data people are working on
improving the handling of access conflicts and problems such as the LJII
running out of paper, as well as waiting for Adobe to drop some "hints".)

	(2) Others suggested the JetScript board (too pricey for me,
and ostensibly it would only let the DOS box print PS to "LPT3"),
and having one machine spool for the other (say, buying a software
emulator for the PC and sending PS files from the Sun there by Ethernet).

I may adopt both tacks, depending on the answer to...

	New Query:  Can one print TeX dvi2ps to the LJII with PacPage?

The possible rub is that the Pacific Data people advise that their
cartridge only takes downloadable fonts (4 at a time) in Bitstream's
format.  What I don't know is how far the terms "Bitstream format",
"Type III", and "vanilla Redbook PS fonts" are from being synonymous.
I neglected to ask the Pacific Data tech. person I spoke to about TeX
specifically (I'm really interested in the WYSIWYG text processor I use
called T3, which has its own soft PS fonts and can generate TeX files),
but she did say she had no experience of people using PacPage in a UNIX
environment.  I do know that QMS Ultrascript handles T3's downloads,
and since it's cheap ($138 from CompuAdd), I may buy it myself, and then
ask Santa to put a PacPage in my stocking :-).


Kenneth W. Regan           			Assistant Professor
Computer Science Dept.				(Opinions not < SUNYaB)
SUNY at Buffalo, 226 Bell Hall			Tel.: (716) 636-3189, -3180
Buffalo,  NY  14260				regan@cs.buffalo.edu