hofbauer@csri.toronto.edu (John Hofbauer) (03/23/91)
Several days ago I asked for comments on the LS. The few that trickled in only pointed out that it was slow. That I can live with. What I want to know is what the output looks like. Not just the TrueType fonts but on other types of output as well.
casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) (03/26/91)
In article <1991Mar22.182031.15931@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> hofbauer@csri.toronto.edu (John Hofbauer) writes: > ...What I > want to know is what the output looks like. Not just the TrueType > fonts but on other types of output as well. Except for TrueType fonts, the output from the LS will be essentially the same as output from the LaserWriter IISC. The quality depends quite a bit on the application. If the application takes advantage of the 300 dpi resolution of the printer, the output *can* be as good as Postscript, with the exception of the rendering of grays with halftone dot patterns -- Postscript provides this and QuickDraw does not, and I don't know of any applications that roll their own halftoning for a non-Postscript printer. A few applications do roll their own spline-drawing, making the LS as good as any Postscript printer for imaging smooth curves. I know of just one application (MacDraw II) that does the work of rotating text to arbitrary angles for a non-Postscript printer. However, many high-end graphics applications are written with Postscript in mind, and treat all non-Postscript printers as ImageWriters. They produce good results on the LS (or SC) for *simple* graphics, but you will see the difference if you are trying to print something subtle. This is a shame, and perhaps it will change as non-Postscript printers become more popular. To summarize, if you are after fancy desktop-publishing graphics, or fine art, you probably want Postscript, for now. Otherwise, the non-Postscript LaserWriters will do a good job for you. David Casseres Exclaimer: Hey!