gaynor@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Jim Gaynor) (03/22/91)
In article <319.27E6B5E7@busker.fidonet.org> Michael.Jones@f31.n343.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Jones) writes: > >Someone back there asked for information about the apple Stylewriter. >Well, we just got them in our store (where I work) May I say that I'm glad I don't shop at your store, after reading your "review" of the StyleWriter. >They are a neat looking "Little" printer, and have a good quality print, >however, they are only 1/3 page per minute in high quality mode, and are >a 360dpi printer so ATM doesn't work... Actually, it's a 1/2 page per minute, although the processing time depends on the complexity of the sheet to be printed, and the speed of your Mac, since all image processing in done on the Mac, not in the StyleWriter. And ATM works nicely. Or did you bother to test it? (Please tell me how being a 360dpi printer would affect a resolution independent rasterizer?) >Also.. Apple truetype sucks rocks... In just a quick test with >pagemaker it looked terrible. Normal word processors don't look too >bad tho'. Do you have any reasons to back it up? What kind of test with PageMaker? On-screen? Print? I'd expect PageMaker to do a poor print test with TrueType, seeing as Adobe uses their own printer drivers. -- Jim Gaynor - Systems Analyst 1 + "This is Serious. He is Lost. The Ohio State University ACS-FM-OCES | We must begin the Search at once." gaynor@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.ed | -Rabbit, from gaynor@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu + "The House at Pooh Corner"
neff@hp-vcd.HP.COM (Dave Neff) (03/26/91)
Regarding True Type and the new Mac printers: When we played with the new StyleWriter and LaserWriter LS we also found that output quality was better using ATM than True Type. Obviously this is not due to the fact the StyleWriter is a 360 DPI output device since an outline found rasterizer shouldn't care. It seemed like some characters were treated as 72 DPI bitmaps rather than outlines by True Type -- this is just a guess from looking at output. Some characters were comparable using True Type and ATM, but other characters (funny symbols for example) just kind of looked like "blobs" with True Type. In one case, both ATM and True Type treated a rotated character as a bitmap where the DeskWriter driver seemingly rotated the outline (it was a fancy arrow character). Anyway, both the StyleWriter and the LaserWriter works with ATM as well. You don't have to use True Type -- you don't even have to pay for it since it comes with the printer. Now I wouldn't say True Type "sucks rocks", but it does seem to have a few glitches still. My main objections to the StyleWriter (besides its speed) is it always prints bidirectionally, and vertical lines and solid area filles are "ragged" due to the mis-alignment of the bidirectional print passes. Also, it has less of a printable region than the LaserWriters and HP DeskWriter. A test document had half of the bottom line "chopped off" on the StyleWriter but the line was all there on the LaserWriter LS and the HP DeskWriter. Dave Neff neff@hpvcfs1.HP.COM Disclaimer: I admit I am biased since I worked on the DeskWriter, but I do endever to be accurate :-). My opinions only of course.
tgoose@eng.umd.edu (Jason Garms) (04/05/91)
In article <319.27E6B5E7@busker.fidonet.org>, Michael.Jones@f31.n343.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Jones) writes: > however, they are only 1/3 page per minute in high quality mode, and are > a 360dpi printer so ATM doesn't work.. Also.. Apple > truetype sucks rocks... In just a quick test with pagemaker it looked > terrible. Normal word processors don't look too bad tho'. Could you explain why ATM doesn`t work because the printer is 360dpi? ATM is supposed to scale the font to the resolution of the output device. Maybe I missed something.... Also, I saw the output from truetype and it was a little better then what I've seen from some ATM outputs. It is certainly (or seems to be) faster. Thanks. Jason Garms tgoose@eng.umd.edu
folta@tove.cs.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) (04/05/91)
I just got my StyleWriter home and can make a few observations: 1. We have SuperLaserSpool 2.0, and it works fine with the StyleWriter. I was surprised, seeing as there have been a couple of small revs out in the last year or two (I think the latest is 2.0.4 or something like that). 2. Timing. ATM 2.0 seems faster than TrueType, on our IIci. Some times we got (on a IIci, using ATM, and SLS, which adds 30-50% overhead): 1 page document with body text 10 point Times and a fair amount of italic, also several large-point-size titles and smaller-size footnotes: Best: 3 min 15 sec Faster: 1 min 30 sec 1 page, landscape page with generous use of 10-point Times and 12-point BlackChancery (a calligraphic font): Best: ~7 min (without SLS it was 5 min) Faster: none offered for landscape printing 3. A minute out of the printer, the ink doesn't smear under a dry finger. Two hours out of the printer, the ink smears under a wet finger, but not enough to render even 10-point times unreadable. (I didn't try the dry finger test 1 second out of the printer.) 4. My printer didn't print the advertised test page on power up. 5. In Nisus, I got different leading for a 72-point type when I used TT instead of ATM, but otherwise the line and letter spacing was indistinguishable. 6. 6-point type is readable, though uneven (in ATM anyhow). 7. TTT Times, Helvetica, Courier, Symbol take up 513K, while the equivalent ATM (PostScript) fonts take up 445K. -- Wayne Folta (folta@cs.umd.edu 128.8.128.8)