info-vax (12/05/82)
>From g.Ryland@SU-SCORE Sat Dec 4 16:42:01 1982
Mail-From: ARPANET host SANDIA rcvd at 29-Nov-82 1108-PST
Mail-From: ARPANET site SU-SCORE rcvd at 29-Nov-82 1203-MST
To: info-vax@SANDIA, info-printers@MIT-MC, mark.umcp-cs@UDEL-RELAY
Remailed-Date: 4 Dec 1982 1047-PST
Remailed-From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow <Geoff5 at SRI-CSL>
Remailed-To: Info-VAX@SRI-CSL: ;
Brian Reid's recent missive concerning laser printers was mostly quite
informative, but on the issue of the IMAGEN vs. Symbolics printing systems,
he is rather misinformed and, I think it is fair to say, blatantly vitriolic.
NB: I work for IMAGEN, but I'll try to keep my remarks objective.
The Symbolics Canon-based printer is NOT based on the LM-1 or LM-2 or any
such beast; if it were, it would cost about $125K! It has a custom 68000
board stuck inside the Canon. Brian says the Symbolics system has "extremely
good software support for various printing formats, including those used
by TRoff, TeX and Scribe." (this is in contrast to the IMAGEN printer, he
claims, which supports TRoff output "at substantially degraded quality.")
Sorry, Brian, both Symbolics and IMAGEN support TRoff in exactly the same
way, with exactly the same quality of output: TRoff's CAT output is converted
to the native language of the printer in question. Further, Scribe DOES NOT
support the Symbolics printer. It may in a few months, but check with
Unilogic for details. Scribe DOES support the IMAGEN printer, and since
Unilogic has an IMAGEN printer, it will probably always have rather good
support for it.
Brian claims the Symbolics printer can "use Chaosnet or Ethernet links
at additional cost." Ignoring the confusion of hardware vs software
protocols, that is false at the current time. Symbolics is planning (I've
heard) to offer 10mb Ethernet hardware with Chaosnet protocols (just fine
if you have Lisp machines) sometime in first quarter '83. Let me point out
that IMAGEN will offer 10mb Ethernet hardware, with both Chaosnet and
TCP/IP software, within 3 months (1 March 82).
Back to the "substantially degraded quality" of output from the IMAGEN
printer. Besides being false, it will get more false, as IMAGEN will be
offering, as part of the first commercial release of the software in its
printer, a native CAT emulation mode to avoid the host overhead of
the conversion from CAT to native language.
Brian's claim that the firmware is extremely flakey, requiring a reset
every 4 jobs he prints, can only come from some extreme confusion about
something. IMAGEN has 70+ systems in the field, and none of them have
complained about such a situation (neither has Brian complained to us
directly, so that we might clear up any problems which he might have).
Also note that Stanford has 17 systems, all of them bought at 10% list
price, and that part of IMAGEN's agreement with Stanford is that they
would maintain them themselves; thus, Brian's claim that he can't get
any support out of IMAGEN is puzzling.
If you are still convinced by Brian's misleading statements, try contacting
some of IMAGEN's customers. Most of them are extremely happy (modulo the
inherent problems with the LBP-10, which, as a wet process printer, has
drawbacks).
--Chris Ryland
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