Laser Conference Message File #2 ================================ ARC'd Messages from CooperWorks free BBS ======================================== Madison, Wi 300/1200/2400 BAUD 24hr (608)271-3685 ======================================================= Laser Printer/DeskTop Publishing Conference ============================================= Includes Messages #295 through #600 (Mar 19, 1987 - May 21, 1987) ___________________________________________________________________ Date: 03-19-87 (01:16) Number: 295 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: LASER CONF MESSAGES ARC'D Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE For any of you who have recently joined the conference (or any of you old timers who have forgotten the origins), I have ARC'd the public messages from the Laser Conference Message base into the file LASRMESS.ARC. You may find it easier to download the file and read the messages at your leisure rather than use your board time to read the older messages. With the conference being only a month and a half old, it's amazing that we have 290 messages already and that the ARC is 50K! Thanks to all of you for your participation and for your uploads. Date: 03-19-87 (05:12) Number: 296 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: STEPHEN PECKICONIS Read: (N/A) Subj: ENVELOPES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Can anyone tell which, if any, Laser printers handle envelopes in bulk? Can you put in 100 envelopes into a bin of any kind and have them fed through automatically. A client wants this capability. Is it asking too much? Thanks for any help. Date: 03-19-87 (09:49) Number: 298 To: STEPHEN PECKICONIS Refer#: 296 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: ENVELOPES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I believe ZYYAD sells an envelope feeder for the HP Laserjet line, Stephen. However, envelopes and HPLJ's often don't mix well and you should definitely insist on a live, hands-on demo before you buy. A better solution may be continuous, hi-quality envelopes in a conventional printer. However, these are quite expensive. Date: 03-19-87 (14:08) Number: 300 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 1 From: MIKE BIRD Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Hi Marty, I found your BBS number in a file downloaded from a BBS in Jersy (Your Old English and Script Fonts). I am calling from my office, where we currently have 1 LaserJet and 2 LaserJet 500+s. I am always on the look out for any information that will enable my department to better utilize our printers. I may also be able to provide some help regarding usage and maintenance problems. We have gone through about 12 laser engines so far with no real problems. The two 500+s are currently attatched to an AT&T StarLAN, a very efficient way to share these type of printers with 40+ PC's. Your board represents a promising source of information, keep up the good work. Date: 03-19-87 (14:35) Number: 301 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: RICK SEAVEY Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Well, I've personally heard very little about third party's developing fonts for the LJ+. I'd also be interested in hearing how others are networking LaserJets with computers other than the PC. We currently have PC's, an HP3000, and a Tandem system connected to the LaserJets and have to code our own escape sequences since very few software packages support the LJ (for the Tandem and HP3000 that is). BYW, I really like the conference...Haven't been able to find a board with so much info on the Laser yet...Good job! -Rick Date: 03-19-87 (17:54) Number: 302 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: BOB WILKERSON Read: (N/A) Subj: OKIDATA LASER ? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Has anyone taken a good look at the new OKIDATA laser printers? From what little I have seen, it seems like a nice printer for the money. I wonder how good the LASERJET+ emulation is? If you have had any experience with one, let me know what you think. Date: 03-19-87 (21:51) Number: 305 To: MIKE BIRD Refer#: 300 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Amazing that you've gone through 12 Laserjet engines so far and apparently feel the volume of your work justifies that. We have 3 Laserjets, the oldest of which is over 2 years old, and have yet to replace an engine. Makes me feel like we're underutilizing our Laserjets! Have you developed any feel for how long a laserjet will last before it needs an engine replacement? 2. Is there any way to tell when the engine is starting to go? 3. How long does it take you to get a replacement engine and are they easy to install? 4. What is the price of a new engine? Date: 03-19-87 (22:11) Number: 308 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: SYSTEMIZER PRINTER LINKS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Has anyone used a hardware device called the SYSTEMIZER to link multiple PC's with multiple Laserjets? I believe there are a couple of installations of those at UW - has anyone else used them? Date: 03-19-87 (22:18) Number: 309 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: NEW BULLETINS 2 AND 3 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE In case you haven't noticed, we now are a 3 Bulletin Conference (looked kind of bare with only 1). Check out the highly personalized opinions about commercial and free software and let us know if you have any disagreements with my choices or would like to suggest some additions of your own to the "best of class" lists. Also leave a message if you have any suggested subjects for future Conference Bulletins. Date: 03-19-87 (22:32) Number: 310 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: LJ2 FILE - 2 UP PRINTING Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE If any of you have downloaded LJ2UP and use it, you might want to d/l the new file LJ2 to use instead. LJ2UP has a problem printing DOC files with imbedded page break characters that assume 66 lines/page. LJ2 corrects that and prints a full 66 lines/page in landscape mode with 2 pages side by side on a single sheet. Both require a compressed print landscape font to be effective. Date: 03-20-87 (00:57) Number: 311 To: STEPHEN PECKICONIS Refer#: 296 From: KENN FLEE Read: YES Subj: ENVELOPES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE At a school I was at for the quad laser, the Quad rep said that Quad was developing an envelope attachement for the feed bin, but that he was feeding envelopes using a home-made cardboard guide that held the envelopes to the right side of the tray (top in landscape mode). He also mentioned that not all envelopes work all that well as the heat and pressure intrinsic to the process tends to seal some envelopes. In any case, I liked the idea of "free" cardboard guides and tried it out... and it works fine, except poorly made envelopes tend to get strange creases in them as they go through the pressure rollers. Otherwise, it does work. But I don't think you could get 100 envlopes in the tray. More like 50 or so. -Kenn- Date: 03-20-87 (08:50) Number: 313 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: BULLETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Nice jobs on Bullets 2 and 3. I still like to plug the Laserfonts/MS Word combination, since access to the dl fonts from Word is absolutely painless. LF will take any existing Word Print driver for the HPLJ (ie, for a specific cartridge) and combine it with any DL font definition. The resulting driver gives you direct access to the resident/cartridge/dl fonts from the character format command with no changes to procedures whatsoever. Slick and painless. Date: 03-21-87 (02:05) Number: 314 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: DOUG EVANS Read: (N/A) Subj: HP LASERS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Wow this is great.This is my first time here, and I think I'm gonna like this. I've been looking for a BBS with a section for Lasers for a long time. Our Co. presently has about 8 to 10 HP Laserjets including the one on my desk for testing. I will definately find this conference very interesting...Thanks. Date: 03-22-87 (04:12) Number: 319 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: RECENT PC MAGAZINE ARTICL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE In case you haven't seen the latest issue of PC Magazine (Vol 6, no 7 - April 14,1987) - there are several interesting items re:Laserjets. On pages 33-35, there is a mini-review of the new Laserjet II. I just have to get me one of those - they sound great. On pages 83-84, Peter Norton (in his last column) writes about the problems of using soft fonts on the Laserjet and also mentions how impressed he is with the new HP Cartridge Z. But you heard that first here from Dan Moore. Way to go Dan! Got any more hot tips? Norton also mentions a "Microsoft 1" cartridge which I've never heard of before. Has anyone heard of that? And what is it? By an amazing coincidence, Jim Seymour on pages 93-94 also writes about the problems of using soft fonts. Both Norton and Seymour compliment Microsoft Word for the way it handles the definitions of soft fonts. Seymour mentions several suppliers of soft fonts, including SoftCraft, VS Software, Conographic, and Bitstream. Has anyone seen the fonts from Bitstream, VS Software or Conographic? As an aside, John Dvorak on page 75 wonders what ever happened to the promise of computer bulletin boards being used for anything other than file downloads - I guess he's never dialed in to this conference. Date: 03-22-87 (12:43) Number: 321 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 319 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: RECENT PC MAGAZINE ARTICL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Marty, the Z cartridge and the Microsoft 1 cartridge are one and the same. In his article, Peter Norton also provides a correction for Word's print driver which allocates too much space for printing the single quote. Interestingly, the Z cartridge has a line printer font which, of all things, IS NOT accessible via ANY MS Word print drivers. I called the folks in Bellevue and asked politely why this would be so since the cartridge bears their name. For the first time I received a flaky explanation about ascii and roman character sets and bla bla bla. No promise that it will ever work, even tho word has drivers for all catridges and all fonts therein, except that singular one. Nice to know they're not all that perfect after all. Date: 03-22-87 (21:32) Number: 322 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: MESSAGE DELETION Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I have deleted many of the early conference messages in the interest of saving space and to make it easier for a new caller to read message base. I tried to retain messages that convey information that people may want to review again. If you want to review the deleted messages, all public messages from #1 thru #287 are ARC'd under LASRMESS.ARC. Date: 03-25-87 (01:03) Number: 326 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: JOHN MOON Read: YES Subj: LASER FONTS (PD FONTS) Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I also use laserfonts from Softcraft with great success. If I remember correctly a great deal of their fonts are in the public domain, since they are user contributed. I encourage you to post them here, as it would be a nice service for all the users of laserfonts out there. They have quite a few disks of them, and with their new font editor out there should be quite a few more. Some of their fonts like Classic, they have designed so they are commercial, but a lot are everyone's for the taking. I have some myself, and if you are interested, I could probably mail you them. You might want to see if Softcraft will give them to you since it would support their product. Date: 03-25-87 (04:17) Number: 327 To: JOHN MOON Refer#: 326 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: LASER FONTS (PD FONTS) Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I have quite a few of the SoftCraft fonts myself but less than half of those in their catalog are designated as "user contributed". And even with those, it never occurred to me that they might be public domain. I'd have to get an OK from SoftCraft before I'd put any of their fonts on the board. Chuck Cooper did write to SoftCraft about supporting the conference but never got a response from them. Date: 03-25-87 (18:36) Number: 328 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 327 From: JOHN MOON Read: YES Subj: LASER FONTS (PD FONTS) Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE According to when I talked to Softcraft the user supported fonts are in the public domain. You might want to give them a quick call just to see if they say the same thing. Date: 03-25-87 (19:28) Number: 330 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: RICK SEAVEY Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Not neccessarily that, but there really is'nt any software out there to support the LaserJets capabilities. You have to take care of entering any and all escape sequences. On the other hand, there is plenty of software for the PC user that takes full advantage of the LJ's capablities. Date: 03-25-87 (21:05) Number: 331 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: JOHN LEDERER Read: (N/A) Subj: POOPOUT Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE We have just spent a frustrating couple of weeks trying to get (a) parts and (b) straight information from Hewlett Packard. We have a lot of heavily used laserjets and they are self destructing on the fusing rollers. Local dealer tried but could only get two sets of replacements; where upon fusing rollers started to disntegrate like cotton candy in the rain. Hewlett Packard is unbelievably frustrating to deal with --10 telephone calls will yield 10 different answers (a big shipment came in, there are none, 5-6 wks, tomorrow, already shipped, put you on the waiting list, what problem?). As well as we can gather: 1. HP has changed the design of its fusing rollers. They deny this, but our older lasers have white ones and the later ones have red ones. They sure look different. 2. The old fusing rollers have a life of 200,000 pages with copier paper, 100,000 pages with Gilbert Newtech bond ( a dust free bond) and 30,000 pages with cotton rag bond ( the good stuff). Wish they'd told us that two years ago. 3. There is an article in last week's PC WEEK about a company offering custom designed cartridges or combinations of other fonts on cartridges. If anyone out their finds a reliable inexpensive envelope feeder please let us know. Incidentally we had a very similar experience with Hewlett POackard about 2 years ago during the "great toner cartridge shortage". Lots of incorrect information--finally got a VP in sales to ship us 5 cartridges to tide us over. Date: 03-26-87 (07:28) Number: 332 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 305 From: MIKE BIRD Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I am surprised that you have never replace an engine after two years. Are we referring to the same component? The laser engine I am referring to is the replacment toner cartridge also referred as a laser engine. If we are talking about the same thing then here are some answers: 1: Engine life ranges from 3 months (under normal use) to 1 month. About 3000 printed pages. 2: Cartridge has a color status indicator on the right side that changes from green - to yellow - to red. The print also fades in the center of the page when its about to kick the bucket. 3: Replacement is very simple. It's a simple matter of popping the hood , pulling the old on out and sliding the new one in. 4: From HP in quantity of 4 the price is about $90. . If you already knew this, sorry for the missunderstanding. . A little tip for anyone who has not heard of it yet: You can extend the life of toner cartridge when it runs dry by removing it and rotating it back and forth (not side to side). Results may very but I have been able to get an additional 40 to 100 pages from a "Dry Cartridge". Date: 03-26-87 (15:03) Number: 334 To: MIKE BIRD Refer#: 332 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I don't know about this, mike. I thought the engine was actually the photosensitive medium, rather than the toner/fuser roller replaceable cartridge. Although you are correct as far as the life expectancy of the throw-away toner cartridge, the engine itself has a rated life of 200,000 pages or thereabouts. Replacing an engine costs far more than replacing the cartridge. Date: 03-26-87 (16:31) Number: 335 To: SYSOP Refer#: NONE From: DICK STOUT Read: NO Subj: LOOKS GOOD! Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE It looks like you have quite a conference going here. We have an HP LaserJet+ at work, plus I run the Computing Technology BBS which in turn is getting into selling the HP LaserJet's, so this conference is just what the doctor ordered. Are you aware of any other BBS's that specialize in Laser stuff? Well anyway thanks, and if you're ever modeming in CALIF, give me a call at 619-375-2306. You can upload and download on the first call although the time is limited. Later.... Date: 03-26-87 (19:00) Number: 336 To: MIKE BIRD Refer#: 332 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Oh that's better. Yes we replace toner cartridges about every 1-2 monthes in each of our PC's. I thought you meant something different by the engine. I think your use of the term engine is confusing there - it implies to me the motor that runs the LJ. The cartridge is referred to as the EP (electrophotographic) Cartridge and I just call it the toner cartridge to differentiate from the font cartridges. And I agree with your advice about extending the life of those by shaking side to side (gives us about 2 days additional use). What I thought you meant is the part that has to be replaced after 2-300,000 pages (I think that's the rated life). Is that the print head? Date: 03-27-87 (00:40) Number: 338 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: QUADLASER HP+ EMULATION Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE There is a new HPPlus emulation file from QuadLaser. (If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to upload it for download). I ran into some problems getting Ventura to run under QuadLaser HPPlus emulation, but here's the results of several phone calls, plus experimentation: 1. If you have a Model 1101 controller board, call QuadLaser (if you have problems with Ventura) and they will exchange controller boards -- or so they say. 2. If you have 1000 or 1100 controllers, you apparently must be using the newest HPPlus "RAM" emulation file, plus have a full 2 meg of memory on board. Until I added the additional 16 256K chips to my 1.5 meg machine, I had random, unpredictable problems that quickly ended in printer "big red switch" time. But after adding the final 512K of RAM, everything seems to work like a charm. I'm finally happy. Now, if they have the Postscript controller ready by June or so (as they are saying), then I'll have my Laser dream printer. -Kenn- Date: 03-27-87 (00:45) Number: 339 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: OKI LASERLINE 6 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE OK... I know I'm in the minority, but I've got a problem running in the "mainstream" with all you HP guys. What do we know about the OkiData LaserLine 6 printer? With a list of $2395 for the HPPlus module version (and a street price of maybe $1900), it looks like the "under $2000" printer may have arrived. But then again, it has the OKIDATA name on it -- good or bad. -Kenn- Date: 03-27-87 (04:13) Number: 340 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: 339 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: OKI LASERLINE 6 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Kenn - I had not heard of the OkiData LaserLine but the new Laserjet II has a list price of only $2495 and it doesn't have to run emulation to think like an HP. Does the LaserLine offer more features? Date: 03-27-87 (21:39) Number: 342 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 340 From: KENN FLEE Read: YES Subj: OKI LASERLINE 6 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE My timing is sure great! I discovered the LaserLine in a distributors catalog (didn't even know I could get the sucker)... then todays PC MAGAZINE has a review of all the "cheap" laser printers. But yes, the Laserline 6 has a bunch of fonts resident, plus some nice options. As usual, the base price of both the Oki and HP's don't tell the whole story... you have to add up all the "options" to get the real price. But the "real" price of the Oki seems more than fair, and I do like the Ricoh engine. -Kenn- Date: 03-28-87 (03:33) Number: 343 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 319 From: MARK EVANIER Read: YES Subj: RECENT PC MAGAZINE ARTICL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I've used the fonts from Conographics and they are excellent...the best soft fonts I've come across. Matter of fact, I recently used them on a job where the text had to be enlarged about 300% from its original 10 pt. printout and it all still looked pretty good. The Conographics folks also make an excellent piece of software called the Font Manager which keeps track of your fonts, organizes them into sets, downloads them to the printer and makes config files for most major word processors. Now that the new Ventura Publisher will interface with soft fonts other than its own, a good Font Manager may be invaluable. Date: 03-28-87 (08:26) Number: 346 To: MARK EVANIER Refer#: 343 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: RECENT PC MAGAZINE ARTICL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Mark - welcome to the conference and thanks for the informative message. Tell us more about Conofonts. Do you have to buy each point size separately or is there a way to enlarge outline fonts easily? How much does it cost for fonts and font manager? Does font manager make config file for Volkswriter? Date: 03-28-87 (08:45) Number: 347 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: MORE PC MAGAZINE ARTICLES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE It's time to get out your reading glasses again. The latest PC Magazine (Vol 6, No 8 - April 28) has several feature articles about laser printers and related software and peripherals. In comparison among 5 under-$3000 lasers, the HP Laserjet II was the top rated. A software product the article mentioned is FONTASY ($69). I have that also & for $69 it does an amazing job of printing to the Laserjet in many unusual fonts. Prints super fast (to Laserjet+ with parallel port) - not with font quality of Fancy Font but much faster. It can also "flow" text in any font around a picture on a page, which even some of the expensive DT publishing packages can't do. Date: 03-28-87 (12:19) Number: 351 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: VENTURA Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I have finally gotten Ventura to run. (Not Ventura's fault, but needed more memory in my printer). A nice feature of Ventura is the ability to define "style" sheets, complete with type styles defined for various parts of a document (headlines, first paragraphs, tables, body text, and so on), column guidelines, page sizes and such. The concept is that the style of a publication can be defined by a typesetting professional, then normal folks can read text keyboarded on a favorite wordprocessor into Ventura, apply the sytle sheet and quickly get a good looking publication (without the "laser" look common to publications formatted by new users overwhelmed with all the options). As a "professional" who spent many years in the typesetting business, this approach makes a lot of sense and results in good looking stuff -- subject to the limited selection of fonts included with Ventura. But since Ventura can access third party fonts, the addition of an additional library of type styles will give all us D/T hackers a powerful tool to destroy reams of paper with. -Kenn- Date: 03-28-87 (16:35) Number: 353 To: DAN MOORE Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: MORE PC MAGAZINE ARTICLES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Yes FONTASY would be fine for a in-house newsletter - esp where you'd like the distinction of unusual font options. About 20 some fonts come with it and hundreds more are available at a reasonable price. Date: 03-29-87 (06:15) Number: 357 To: DAN MOORE Refer#: 334 From: CARL VOELZ Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Something goes wrong after 200,000 copies on the HPs that can be replaced on your premises by an HP field engineer. I've been told that it costs about $400. I first heard about it from a Xerox guy flogging his wears and bragging that his unit had a usable life of 1,000,000 copies before something caught the attention of the angel of death and it went to laser engine heaven. Xerox cost 40% more than the equivalent HP model, and the cost of replacing Xerox's gizmo was more. -- By the way, I think that the Xerox model type was their 4000. I was advised, in a smarmy kind of way, that for a paltry kilobuck, or thereabouts, I could get Xerox's ENTIRE professional typographic font set--over a thousand type faces, complete--the complete set of their fonts that they sell for their big-buck photocomposers. That sounded interesting. The fonts were on floppies and had to be downloaded. Date: 03-31-87 (07:35) Number: 370 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 336 From: MIKE BIRD Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I will have to stop using the term 'engine' from no on, not only is it misleading but as pointed out by another user, incorrect. I stand (or at least 'TYPE') corrected. Now as for the print head, let call it the laser engine. I will not pretend to fully know exactly how it works. You might think of it as being about the same as the process that occurs in a xerox copier. In a copier, the image that will appear on the paper is charged electrostaticly to the drum (the equivalent of the toner cartridge in a laser jet, I think). The "Print hea is not a machanical device as the term might imply. At least the above is what I think. It is not cast in stone, like my usage of the term "laser engine". Date: 04-02-87 (03:42) Number: 373 To: STEVE WOLF Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: NO Subj: HPFONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Welcome to the Conference, Steve. I didn't create any of the fonts in HPSOFT11.ARC or FONTS.ARC (I should be so talented!). I thought that ARC included the name of who created the fonts. If I had the name, I would have included it with the ARC. I thought that font was too small to be real useful but for real small fonts, you coul try FancyFont from SoftCraft - their fonts go down to 3 pt. Date: 04-04-87 (00:20) Number: 375 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: NEC LASERS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE From manufacturer promo material: 3 LED laser-like printers from NEC. LC-850 (Avail April 6) - 128K mem, 4 res. fonts, dual serial/par, 2 font cart. ports for 20 opt. font carts (12 fonts online). Other opts: 1.33 meg for full page graphics, 2nd 250-pg input tray. $2,195 list LC-860plus - HP LaserjetPlus emulation, 1.3 meg mem for full-page graphics, dual 250-sheet input trays. (April 6) $2,995 list LC-890 - 3meg memory, PostScript, 35 resident fonts, gray scaling, rotation, type scaling. Four interfaces: Appletalk, Centronics parallel, RS-232, RS-422. (June 1) $4,795 list. Date: 04-04-87 (04:33) Number: 378 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: KEEP PUBLIC MESSAGES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Everyone - Please do not delete your public messages in this conference. Periodically I will delete many of the older ones after ARCing the ones of continuing interest but will still leave the ones that address still current questions (at least until Chuck hollers about the space we're taking). Thanks for your cooperation. Date: 04-06-87 (23:12) Number: 382 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KARIN HELSTROM Read: (N/A) Subj: FONT SIZES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Can I assume that Roman-8 fonts, with their foreign symbols, take up more ram than their USASCII equivalents? Date: 04-07-87 (11:30) Number: 383 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MAURICE THALER Read: (N/A) Subj: KISS OR BIG KISS W/JLASER Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I am trying to find the MOST cost effective laser printer setup and a friend of mine from Boston suggested a combination of the Kiss printer with the Jlaser card. He said that Ventura and Pagemaker both support the Jlaser card, and that the combination would give me a fast setup with 2meg of memory which can also be used as extended memory when not used for the laser. He said that graphic dumps to the printer were VERY fast compared to other printer setups he had seen and it looks like I could get this whole setup for less than $3000 which is a lot less than a HP+ with 2Meg of memory. Am I headed in the wrong direction with this setup. What is the great advantage of HP if the JLASER card is well supported as it seems to be. It is rumored that a PostScript Emulator will be available to run through the JLASER card... I don't want to make a $3000 mistake but it does appear that the card in the computer is a lot cheaper than the card in the printer.... Date: 04-07-87 (20:35) Number: 384 To: CARTER LUSHER Refer#: NONE From: JIM WARGULA Read: YES Subj: HP LJ SERIES II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE As I told you today, I have one in use now with WordPerfect, and it does a nice, fast job. Our font cartridges have not come in yet, but will be in soon. The thing is nice and small and quiet, of course. I have ordered the new WordPerfect Printer disk with the LJ II fonts and support. jlw Date: 04-07-87 (22:36) Number: 385 To: KARIN HELSTROM Refer#: 382 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: FONT SIZES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE That is correct. Roman-8 will take about twice the storage space as a USASCII font. On a Prestige Elite soft font set from HP that I checked, the Roman-8 10 pt was about 20,000 bytes and the USASCII was about 10,000. Date: 04-07-87 (23:06) Number: 389 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: NEW CALLER INFORMATION Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I notice we have a lot of new callers to the conference in the last few weeks, a number of you are long distance callers. In early messages, the original conference members described their installations and use of laser printers, etc. We're interested to know more about you so we invite you to participate in the message base as well as downloading files and tell us about your installations and your use or interest in laser printers and/or DT publishing. Date: 04-08-87 (01:25) Number: 390 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: 339 From: BRIAN MOURA Read: YES Subj: OKI LASERLINE 6 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE We have 5 and are very pleased. Our price was 1788 + module for each. Also, it has an optional 2nd paper tray (fits under #1) for $399 -- everyone else makes you get a more expensive model for 2 sheet feed. . It's based on the Ricoh 6ppm engine like the new IBMN laser. Date: 04-08-87 (01:27) Number: 391 To: BOB WILKERSON Refer#: 302 From: BRIAN MOURA Read: YES Subj: OKIDATA LASER ? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The HP emulation is very good -- we use the B, G & M tables in Word Perfect with the Oki and the PE 12 font cartridge. Date: 04-08-87 (01:40) Number: 392 To: BRIAN MOURA Refer#: 390 From: KENN FLEE Read: YES Subj: OKI LASERLINE 6 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Which module(s) did you select for your Oki LaserLines? Reason I'm asking is 'cause I'm thinking of getting one as a demo unit and would normally pick the Laserjet+ module... but maybe that's not what most folks would be thinking about getting. Seems to me you'd also want to then get the RAM cartridge ($399 list for 512K?!). Now all the extras have pushed the price up into the range where other machines look pretty competitive. -Kenn- Date: 04-08-87 (01:55) Number: 393 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: QUADLASE/VENTURA/AVERY Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Now I'm not sure if I'm SUPPOSED to be able to do this, but... As the author of QFILER, the promise of keyboard templates to registered users has been a knotty problem. About the time I get a bunch, I change the program to make them obsolete. So, I created a keyboard template in Ventura using the Graphics heavily, then copied the completed template so that I had 4 on a 8.5x11 sheet. So far, so good. But the type was tiny little 6pt Helvetica and I was afraid that the intermediate step of offset printing would result in the loss of some of the fine lines. I had some Avery Non-tear (plastic) sheets on hand that were designed to be run through a plain-paper copier, so I gave them a try. Wow! The resulting copies were sharper than the paper output, and the plastic sheets made it through without turning into a melted mess. A final test of multiple copies (rather than single sheets) even worked -- a small stack of sheets fed into the printer OK, and Ventura's multiple copy selection had them coming out of the printer as fast as they could feed (after the first one). The resulting sheet quality has me thinking I may use them for masters that will be later offset printed. -Kenn- PS: Avery sheets available from stationers, mine were on sale from Quill at just over 20 cents a sheet or thereabouts. Date: 04-08-87 (12:27) Number: 394 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: BOB FOSTER Read: (N/A) Subj: WHEN YOU ARE REALLY POOR! Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Greetings boys and girls... put on your thinking caps and lend a hand with practical advice and personal observations! I work for a "Not for Profit" group, actually that is an understatement... since I work for the American Legion - a group of war-time veterans who are concerned with community state and nation. I stood around for three years with a tin cup begging for a PC and LaserJet. This past December Santa came a few days early and dropped an IBM PC XT and a LaserJet Plus on my work stand... Now I have the tin cup outreached once again asking my vets for a few more dollars to make the HP sit up and bark. What advice can you provide to us that would enable some copy setting capability, bulletins, posters etc. Our only software at this stage of the game is WORD... Please leave a note here on the bulletin board with your advice, or if you are one of our rich commercial business cousins with a toll free, you can reach me at area code 317 635-8411. Thanks in advance for the "bottom line" advice you can send this way.... Cheers = Bob Foster Date: 04-09-87 (15:35) Number: 395 To: BOB FOSTER Refer#: 394 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: WHEN YOU ARE REALLY POOR! Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Get PCRGB13 from this or another BBS, it is an excellent program and operates well with the HPLJ+, Also, it is shareware. Date: 04-10-87 (14:52) Number: 396 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MAURICE THALER Read: (N/A) Subj: LASER PRINTERS AND COPIER Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I have always wondered why the hardware which seems so similar (perhaps identical ) in laser printers and copiers have not been combined in one device. The only laser printer I have seen that has copier capabilities is a XEROX , but there was no interface between the two, they just shared the engine. WHY IS THIS? ! ? It seems so obvious to me that the potential to share this technology between these devices is amazing. Anyone here have any speculations on this? Date: 04-11-87 (03:03) Number: 397 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: NONE From: SHAWN EVERSON Read: YES Subj: QUAD 1101/TECH/VENTURA Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Hi Kenn, I am having problems with ventura & the LS-1101 dropping chars (it seems) so.... I called Quad tech support which refered me to Software (Ed Bouffard -- The sysop of the, by the way.) and he said that the HPPLUS emulator has had EXTENSIVE Beta testing and it must be my hardware or that it it Ventura's problem!!!!! You know how all those low level software people are!! Anyway have you got any more info on the controller board problem or how I can get it swapped out if it needs it? Other than that small problem I am very happy with it. Date: 04-11-87 (16:35) Number: 398 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: JIM WARGULA Read: YES Subj: HP LJ SERIES II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE So far have gotten the N cartridge and have ordered the update WP printer disk that has LJ-II support. Should have it by early next week. Date: 04-11-87 (20:16) Number: 399 To: SHAWN EVERSON Refer#: 397 From: KENN FLEE Read: YES Subj: QUAD 1101/TECH/VENTURA Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The whole story (as I got it) is that if you have problems running Ventura with a QuadLaser, AND you have controllers 1000 or 1100 (the older ones) then you call Ed Bouffard... if you have the newer 1101, then you call Mary Prinse (404-564-5566). She indicated that they would make a controller exchange. The story with the Ricoh support is apparently this: 1. You call Ricoh and tell em the machine is broke. 2. Ricoh sends a tech out and he says, yep, its broke. 3. He goes away, calls Quad and has THEM ship the controller. 4. He comes back, takes 10 minutes and swaps boards. At one time Ricoh stocked the replacement controller boards, but Quad in an internal squabble pulled them back to Atlanta. The Ricoh guys are rather vocal about the situation... as I am. The net result is that you're talking more than a day or two to get a board swap. If you call Mary, ask about how the boards are to be exchanged and if she talks about calling Ricoh, confirm the above operating procedure and give her hell. Otherwise, I'm sure you're going to be super pleased. Freddy has decided that the quality of the Quad is more that adequate for his next financial offering printed material... actually I think it looks fantastic! -Kenn- Date: 04-12-87 (01:07) Number: 402 To: JIM WARGULA Refer#: 398 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: HP LJ SERIES II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The N cartridge is not bad. Have you considered either the F or the new Z for proportionally spaced print? It looks like professionally printed material. Date: 04-12-87 (02:55) Number: 403 To: MAURICE THALER Refer#: 383 From: MARK EVANIER Read: YES Subj: KISS OR BIG KISS W/JLASER Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Before you install a JLaser card in anything, take a look at what you do to the warranty of the printer. The local Hewlett-Packard service folks, for instance, take the position that doing that voids your warranty and they also refuse to service such a machine. I'm not sure why this is but it's a point worth investigating before you look into matters. They don't even want to hear about a Laserjet used in conjwith a JLaser. Date: 04-14-87 (01:13) Number: 407 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: NONE From: SHAWN EVERSON Read: YES Subj: CONTINUING SAGA OF LS1101 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Well I called Mary Prinse today and I found out what the problem is with the old LS1101 boards - They need to have 3 'LS chips replaced with 'ALS parts for speed and the ROM's upgraded to rev 2.07. BUT my board already had these mod's done to it! So.... I am waiting for a call from Tim Cutler who is the product support person (and the board designer if I rember correctly). Ah well......maybe I found another bug. BTW are you running your LS1100 on the Everex 1800? I wonder if it could be the BIOS or sumptin'. I have had problems with a IBM 3101 emulator with anything other than IBM's BIOS chips in. I'll let you know as the story unfolds. Date: 04-14-87 (11:31) Number: 408 To: SHAWN EVERSON Refer#: 407 From: KENN FLEE Read: YES Subj: CONTINUING SAGA OF LS1101 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The reason I knew the path to take for Ventura problems was because I originally had the opposite of what you describe: Occasional EXTRA characters inserted into text, closely followed by printer crash. But I had the old 1000 board and things were supposed to work. A little head scratching suggested that maybe I ought to bring the board up to the full 2 meg of memory. I did so, and everything has worked fine (except for eventual controller board finally going west -- got new board). And yes, its running with stock Everex 1800, so's that's not the problem. (Everything as shipped, with addition of MS bus-mouse). As an interim solution, I had moved the Ventura fonts into my SCLaserPlus directory (a desktop publishing package originally for HP, but customized and supported for/by Quad). So for a while I got the great Ventura fonts under another program... but then again, I don't have the 72-font set! **hint** Since both PCWrite and WordPerfect have support for HP, you could try running them with HPPLUS emulation and see how that fares. -Kenn- Date: 04-15-87 (04:07) Number: 411 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: NONE From: SHAWN EVERSON Read: YES Subj: MORE LS1101 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I got a call from Tim Cutler today and the only thing that he could suggest was that I send him some sample printout. I've done that. Maybe he can reproduce it there, if not he doe't have a snowball's chance at perihelion of fixing it. Damn It really is a nice printer other than that. I guess that i'll have to try other wp's with it but I think that the problem will not show itself unless the program downloads LOTS of data to the printer such as a couple of fonts, bunches of graphics, etc. The file that will screwup most is the SCOOP file that comes with ventura. Ah we ....... The trials and tribulations of hardware/software design Date: 04-15-87 (12:42) Number: 413 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 1 From: DON KELLEY Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Just upgraded our HPLJ Model A to an HPLJ Series II and have found the world of soft fonts. Got your name and this board's number from your program FONTS.ARC from a local BBS and 'fell in love' with soft fonts. Currently use the LJ to print large reports from dBase III information/data. We plan to print our local newsletter using it as soon as we pick an adequate DTP package. Still on the fence about that. I use Clickart Personal Publisher at home but it is rather crude (but better than nothing). One of my associates here at work has a MAC at home and keeps shaking his head about DTP on the IBM/Clones. Have dumped your message file to disk and will browse thru it later off line. I assume others have mentioned the $1699 cost for an HPLJ II as advertised in PC Week by a Texas firm. If not, you might check it out. If needed, I can dig out the name and number. Date: 04-15-87 (19:35) Number: 414 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 353 From: RICHARD TAYLOR Read: YES Subj: MORE PC MAGAZINE ARTICLES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE There will shortly (<30 days) be a new version of Fontasy announced that will support the LJ+ and LJ II in full page 300 dpi (if you have EMS memory in your PC) I have been using Fontasy for over two years and have about 300 of the fonts (including 100 I converted from Fontrix) and can recommend it highly... Date: 04-15-87 (20:16) Number: 417 To: RICHARD TAYLOR Refer#: 414 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: MORE PC MAGAZINE ARTICLES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Sounds like a real boost for Fontasy! The last time I talked with them, it sounded like they didn't really have any development plans. Have they committed to displaying in EGA mode yet? Are the Fontrix fonts you converted available from FOntasy now? Why do you need EMS memory in your PC to display full page graphics on LJ II if you have 2 meg memory board on the LJ II? Or are you saying that you can get full page graphics on LJ+ and LJ II with the standard 512K because Fontasy uses EMS instead? That would be great. I have not heard of anyone using EMS as printer memory except with the J Laser EMS board. Fontasy is a nice low end DTP package. I'd like to see them further develop its capabilities. Date: 04-16-87 (09:11) Number: 418 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: 143 From: MIKE FARNHAM Read: YES Subj: QUADLASR Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I stand corrected. We recently tried to install the EPROM upgrades to Rev. 2.07 but unfortunately they did not work so we sent them back and hopefully when we receive them again they will be OK. With the lotus driver we have made some really outstanding pie charts in the High Res Mode of course they take at least 10 minutes to generate vs. 5 minutes for Medium Res and 2 minutes or less for Hewlett-Packard emulation. But as they say it is worth waiting for. Up till now we have been using the Quad in epson emulation so it works with PC-Write. Currently I am playing around with a desktop publishing package titled SC\\ LaserPlus. We were hoping the NewsRoom package could take advantage of the Laser printer but were stuck with the epson emulation. Also the quad was limited to 8 1/2 by 11 or 8 1/2 by 12 so we couldn't use legal size paper with it. Thanks for the info. Mike Date: 04-17-87 (22:06) Number: 419 To: MIKE FARNHAM Refer#: 418 From: KENN FLEE Read: NO Subj: QUADLASR Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I have used SCLaserPlus and it has some really nice features... if you can live with the NON-what you see is what you get. The only thing I miss is an "insert-space" or "insert-chararacter" command, but even Ventura doesn`t have that. -Kenn- Date: 04-18-87 (00:52) Number: 420 To: MIKE FARNHAM Refer#: 418 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: NO Subj: QUADLASR Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I'd be interested to get your reactions to SC\LaserPlus when you have had a chance to get familiar with it. As I understand it, that is not a WYSIWYG - but how well does it work otherwise and how easy is it to use? Date: 04-18-87 (02:29) Number: 422 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 417 From: RICHARD TAYLOR Read: YES Subj: MORE PC MAGAZINE ARTICLES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Well the Fontrix fonts are a touchy subject.. I bought them myself when I was using Fontrix.. then converted them for use in Fontasy.. I don;t think that ProSoft would/could distrubute thme at all... Date: 04-18-87 (22:09) Number: 423 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 420 From: KENN FLEE Read: YES Subj: QUADLASR Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE SCLaserPlus is similiar to the PCWrite concept... you first enter the text with an included editor (barly adequate, but functional and fast), then exit the editor and print the text using a formatter. Commands are kinda a combination of pascal-like stuff (begin points..end points) and wordstar dot commands. But the range of commands are impressive and printing is very fast. Apparently SCLaserPlus was originally written for the HP, but they have customized it to also work with the QuadLaser who is bundling it with their high-end DTPublishing package. Two really nice features are an icon-editor where you can create your own logos and special characters, and a terrific screen grabber that captures both text and graphic screens. I used this on my latest QFiler Manual to show screens and where the text is shown in inverse video, it captured and printed it beautifully. Plus, you can scale the pictures down in size to fit. Multiple column are supported as well. Now, I'm not sure how easy it is for a "novice" to use. The manual is mostly reference matter and I've discovered a lot of tricks that make good programming sense, but are not covered in the manual. But its "only" $495 list (ask me about the "real" discount price) and works well for most current DTPublishing applications: newsletters, newsreleases and so on. It's biggest weakness is it's weird way of indicating point sizes: all size changes are referenced to a default 10 pt, and are indicated by entering typesize+1, or LargeType. But what that size will be is determined on how a externally generated data file is set up, and that is NOT covered in the manual. Any questions? (I ran out of space!) -Kenn- Date: 04-19-87 (00:26) Number: 424 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: EDWARD MENDELSON Read: (N/A) Subj: LJ II UTILITIES? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Hello from a newcomer to this board, which has the best collection of laser utilities I've seen anywhere. Has anyone had any experience with commercial utilities for controlling the LJ II that are worth using? I find I can manage quite a bit with batch files, but a good utility for sending fonts, making 'em permanent, assigning 'em numbers--and perhaps also something resident like Gallo's LASERJET for printing envelopes would be nice to have... By the way, for WordPerfect users I've uploaded a sample macro for automatically addressing and formatting envelopes with the LJ II. The file has an unmemorable name like WPLJEN.ARC, but I hope someone will find it and give it a try. Date: 04-19-87 (17:08) Number: 426 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: 27 From: GARY SINGER Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I have a QuadLaser and just got fed up not being supported by software manufacturers so decided last week to try the HP LJ+ emulation. Now I'm looking for a very good font generation/editor program.... any suggestions would be very helpful. Thanks. Date: 04-19-87 (17:11) Number: 427 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 103 From: GARY SINGER Read: YES Subj: CONTINUING MSG 102 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I see by an old message of yours that you seem to know about fonts... any pros and cons of font editors? Thanks Date: 04-19-87 (17:23) Number: 431 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: GARY SINGER Read: (N/A) Subj: LASER JETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Folks: I'm not a stupid person but I don't understand why, with the flexibility you have with downloadable fonts, you should EVER need to use cartridges, which at least to my understanding, are very expensive and cumbersome?? And can you believe I just wrote such a run on, convoluted sentence?? Can someone teach a guy who has a QuadLaser the necessity of cartridges?? Date: 04-20-87 (16:04) Number: 435 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 389 From: CLIFF GREEN Read: YES Subj: NEW CALLER INFORMATION Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Hi, I've been on here a couple of times before, but didn't realize you wanted some self-intro material. Well, I work for one of the medical schools in New Jersey (Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, formerly Rutgers Medical School). We have several laser printers hereabouts, mostly HP LaserJets, with a few HP LJ+'s, a smattering of KISSes and Kyoceras, and at least one Canon (which has since been sent back since it doesn't function as advertised). We have been using them for the usual gamut of nice quiet print jobs, but are starting now to edge into DT publishing (a few offices here have ordered Ventura, and our Academic and Research Computing Committee is meeting this week and more formally bringing up the question of what we're going to do about DTP on a college-wide basis), and at least one group has decided to investigate (read: buy) software to allow the use of a laserjet as a plotter (i.e., get smooth curves, etc. out of the jet). I'm also uploading some code (C source plus .exe and .prd files) for using with MS Word, written by one of our researchers to overcome some of his frustrations with Word's inability to dl some of the 'newer' soft fonts from inside (i.e., inside Word, when you do an esc-p-p). Date: 04-20-87 (16:18) Number: 436 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 416 From: CLIFF GREEN Read: YES Subj: HP LASERJETS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Ah, for those of you working at large institutions (like universities?), you might want someone in purchasing to contact HP directly.... Our school has a direct purchase agreement with HP, and we get a 45% discount on pc-related hardware (e.g., Vectras and LaserJets +, 500, and II's) and 50% on software. This works out to about $1350 for a LaserJet II base model. Date: 04-21-87 (07:17) Number: 440 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MIKE BIRD Read: (N/A) Subj: RECYCLED TONER CARTRIDGES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Has anyone used a toner cartridge that has been recycled? If so how did you like it? Was the quailty of the print the same as a new cartridge? Did it last as long as a new cartridge? What company recycled the cartridge? (AMS LASER SUPPLY, or Michlin Computer Consultant's Inc. or other) What was your cost? Did the company guarantee the cartridge? Any info you can provide would be helpful. Thanks. Date: 04-21-87 (07:45) Number: 441 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: JIM WARGULA Read: (N/A) Subj: WP-LJII Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE For the WordPerfect users out there, I just popped the $15 mailing fee for the LaserJet II Printer-1 disk. It has the specific LJII printer for installation purposes, and it works! There is nothing different for font cartridges, but they seem to be generic HP-LJ anyway. At any rate, I believe that I could make a copy of the disk for any registered user to save redundant effort. This disk is not currently downloadable from the WP Fido. jlw Date: 04-22-87 (09:03) Number: 444 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: JOHN MARTIN Read: (N/A) Subj: ARTMART.ARC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I just uploaded a small collection of Clip Art designed for Desk Top Publishing. This is intended as a sample...I have scanned and edited several 100 of these things since there does not seem to be much of it available yet of the DOS market. If there is a need for this, I'll upload more. /jm/ Date: 04-22-87 (10:32) Number: 446 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: PCC FILES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I don't know whether I'm just slow, but thought I'd pass along this hint: When using the clip art files now on this board with a .PCC extension, you bring them into your Paintbrush programs through the Edit menu item, then clicking on "Cutout* is...". Select the file, then paste into your workspace, editing, sizing and whatever. Save THAT file and Ventura can import just fine. If I'm stating the obvious, I apologize, but this threw me for a loop. Of course, maybe its in the manual. I didn't check there! -Kenn- Date: 04-22-87 (10:53) Number: 448 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: PCC FILES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE A further hint: The art in the newest ARTMART file are, in some cases, too big to fit in the normal window of my MicroSoft Paintbrush workarea. But if after selecting paste, you immediately select "size and scale", you can reduce the size to fit in the active window, and consequently capture the whole thing... WITHOUT clipping off any of the art. Again, this may be in the manual... but who reads manuals, right? -Kenn- Date: 04-23-87 (01:50) Number: 453 To: EDWARD MENDELSON Refer#: 424 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: NO Subj: LJ II UTILITIES? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE There are lots of good commercial utilities for downloading fonts to the Laserjet + and making them permanent and assigning them numbers. One is Laser Fonts from Soft Craft for about $150-200. Another is PCLPAK from Hewlett Packard that comes free with some sets of their soft fonts. You can also download with the DOS COPY /B command as illustrated in the FONTS.ARC file and that method works faster than any of the commercial download utilities I've tried. Date: 04-23-87 (02:11) Number: 457 To: CLIFF GREEN Refer#: 435 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: NO Subj: NEW CALLER INFORMATION Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Cliff - welcome to the conference and thanks much for the uploads and the info about your shop's use of laser printers. Re:MS Word, have you read the PC Magazine columns (by Norton and/or Seymour) in the last couple of months on using MS Word with the Laserjet? I've read about software for plotting on the Laserjet but haven't seen any results or talked to anyone who has tried it so I'll be interested to hear how that works compared to plotting on the HP 7475 for example. Date: 04-24-87 (13:38) Number: 465 To: MAURICE THALER Refer#: 396 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: LASER PRINTERS AND COPIER Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Yes, and the Xerox copier/printer isn't selling so well because for the same price you could get both stand-alone units. When you want to make a copy, are you willing to wait while a 25 page listing is being produced, or vice-versa. In a similar fashion, the optics for a camera could be used in a slide projector, but few manufacturers have decided to combine them in a single unit. Date: 04-26-87 (06:13) Number: 470 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTIN REUBEN Read: (N/A) Subj: PROPORTIONAL FONTS ??? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I'm a new laser user with an HP laserjet II (And a "B" cart). The times roman face is good for much of my work, but since it is proportional I've got problems when I import a lotus print file into a word processing document...since the print file is a "solid" block without any tabs, the numbers on the right side of the page are all unequal in spacing down the column and none of my decimal points line up. Is there any way around this? (Such as a fixed space face such as times roman) Extra memory? Should I install it in the printer (and who has the best price?). Or wait for a new tall tree board to come out and support the printer (and then see if if I've got conflicts with the AST Advantage AT EEMS board already there?) Thanks for all replys! Date: 04-26-87 (08:45) Number: 471 To: MARTIN REUBEN Refer#: 470 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: PROPORTIONAL FONTS ??? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Yep - that's right. LOTUS spreadsheets will not come out correctly lined up using proportionally spaced fonts. Nor will anything in general that is columnar in nature (unless you use special ESC sequences). Your problem is easy to handle however. The Laserjet II I believe comes with 6 resident fonts. 10 pt Courier in portrait and landscape (medium and bold) and 16.66 pt Line Printer in portrait and landscape. About 90% of the spreadsheets we have use the Line Printer font in landscape mode. I think the problem is that you haven't configured the printer set-up string in LOTUS to select the proper font. To do this, enter LOTUS 123 and from the main menu type /WGDPS. That will allow you to enter the default printer set-up string. Now enter the following exactly as shown: \027E\027&l1o8C\027(s17H\027&k7.2H Be careful to use upper & lower case exactly as shown & note the differences between the small o and the number 0 and between the small l and the number 1. To print in portrait mode instead of landscape in a particular spreadsheet, replace the l1o with l0o. After entering the string shown above, hit return followed by P and then 45. That will print 45 lines per page in landscape mode (make it 60 for portrait mode). Then type QU. That will update the defaults for LOTUS. There's more in that printer string than you strictly need but that allows you to modify some things later if you wish. For example, try changing the 7.2H to 6.0H or 9.0H. Date: 04-27-87 (02:12) Number: 473 To: MARTIN REUBEN Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: PROPORTIONAL FONTS ??? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Yes we use proportional fonts almost exclusively in correspondence and any other generally narrative documents. If you want the best quality font though, you can do better than the B cartridge. The F cartridge is a more refined version of Times Roman (especially has corrected spacing) and the Z cartridge has 12 point as well as 10 point Times Roman. HP's soft fonts also have improved versions of Time Roman (better looking letters than B and F at least) Date: 04-27-87 (07:07) Number: 474 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 473 From: MARTIN REUBEN Read: YES Subj: PROPORTIONAL FONTS ??? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Thanks...I'll go for the Z cart. Microcenter (Columbus) is very good about exchanges and the like. Can you help me with additional memory? I will be starting to use Ventura, and I know that I'll need more memory than just the 512K. Should I purchase additional memory to install in the laserjet (and who has the best price?) or should I wait until Tall Tree announces a J laser board for the series II? (And what will that do to my AST Advantange AT board in terms of interrupt conficts and use of EMS?) Thanks! Date: 04-28-87 (00:39) Number: 476 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: JOHN MOON Read: (N/A) Subj: MIRCOSOFT Z CARTRIDGE Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Does anyone know if the landscape compressed font is any different on the Z cartridge then the other cartridges. All the laserjet utils I use to turn on landscape compressed mode simply give me landscape regular courier font. I'm using the cartridge on a Laserjet+. Date: 04-29-87 (12:58) Number: 481 To: JOHN MOON Refer#: 476 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: MIRCOSOFT Z CARTRIDGE Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Yes, something is amiss with the small pitch lineprinter font in the Z cartridge. Even tho it bears the Microsoft name, it's not even available via Microsoft Word's Z-cartridge print driver. A call to Microsoft yielded some of the flakiest excuses I have heard. Date: 04-29-87 (13:24) Number: 483 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTIN REUBEN Read: (N/A) Subj: SCANNERS & SUCH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Is anyone out there using a scanner? If so, what kind and how much? Question number two: I have a large print buffer in my system (256K in expanded memory). Is my laser printer (HP series II, 512K) using any of this buffer. Or I suppose the question asked correctly is, is the system using the buffer before sending it to the printer. Or does the printer use the buffer when the 512K is full? Will I need the buffer when memory in the printer increases to 2.5 meg? Date: 04-29-87 (14:06) Number: 487 To: MARTIN REUBEN Refer#: 483 From: JOHN MARTIN Read: YES Subj: SCANNERS & SUCH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE We use a PC Scan Plus from Dest Corp. Works great, does graphics, scans text right into you word processor (we use Word Perfect) without having to translate ASCII files. Save graphics as .TIF or .PCC files. If the orginal is messy (bad Xerox, etc) it can be very slow...up to 6-7 minutes a page, but clean copies go through fast and with a very low error rate. It is not a flat bed scanner, though, which eliminates some types of use such as scanning from bound material. Date: 04-29-87 (19:12) Number: 489 To: MARTIN REUBEN Refer#: 483 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: SCANNERS & SUCH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE If you use the spooling software hopefully furnished with the expanded memory board, and invoke it correctly, then all data routed to the LPTx port goes to that buffer first before it is routed to the parallel port you specified. It is immaterial what type of printer is attached to the PC, they all will receive the benefits of the buffer. However, you cannot think of the expanded memory print buffer as an extension of the laser printer's own memory. For example, to generate graphics requires sufficient INTERNAL memory in the printer itself. Thus, the PC buffer does not compensate for the lack of memory in the Laserjet. The only attachment I know of which addresses your point is the jLaser board from Tall tree, which is in fact a part of the printer, but which resides in the PC itself. Assuming that you have sufficient memory in the printer to perform the desired function (ie, graphics), the PC buffer will allow you to regain control of your application a little faster than without the buffer. Date: 04-30-87 (03:09) Number: 492 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: BOB GREENE Read: (N/A) Subj: HP LJET II AND WORDPERFEC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Just got your number and decided to give you all a call. I'm with INtel, heavily involved in setting pc standards etc. Just go a LJet II and am trying to use it with soft fonts (24 pt Helvetica) to make viewgraphs. Proportional spacing seems to me messing me up...can't seem to control spacing....also can't seem to get access to more than one downloaded font at a time. Any ideas? Got the new WP Printer disk - LJet II definintion doesn't seem to support downloads at all..After this project next step is to get it going with Freelance and Pagemaker-- Goal? Prepare graphics for use as viewgraphs, 35mm slides, reduced size for hard copy handouts, and still further reduced for import into Pagemaker. 2nd laser is an HP Ljet + with the 2 meg option installed - slide system is VideoShow 150. Would be real interested in sharing info, experience, trials and tribulations. Can also reach me at the Intel board 408-496-4903. Thanks......... Date: 04-30-87 (08:48) Number: 495 To: MARTIN REUBEN Refer#: 474 From: DON KELLEY Read: YES Subj: PROPORTIONAL FONTS ??? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The only word processors I have tried that truely support proportional fonts are Microsoft Word and WS2000. WS, Version 4.00 says it does, but have not had time to try it out as yet. Either of the first two will do what you want as far as good looking correspondence. Date: 04-30-87 (11:32) Number: 497 To: BOB GREENE Refer#: 492 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: HP LJET II AND WORDPERFEC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Bob - Have you downloaded fonts to your Laserjet+. I'm not sure if you're saying that you never downloaded fonts or that the downloading that worked OK on the LJ+ now doesn't work on the LJ II. As far as I know, the downloading works the same on the LJ II as on the LJ+. Different word processors handle soft fonts with different degrees of ease and perfection. With any word processor that allows you to imbed printer escape codes, you can call up a soft font by number or by characteristics. If by number, you have to assign the number when you download (and different download software has different defaults for assigning this number - some start numbering at 1000, some start at 0 or 1). What download software are you using? Dan mentioned Laserfonts. There is also PCLPAK from HP and lots of others - or you can use the DOS COPY /B option illustrated in the file FONTS.ARC in directory 22. Date: 04-30-87 (12:14) Number: 498 To: DON KELLEY Refer#: 495 From: KENN FLEE Read: YES Subj: PROPORTIONAL FONTS ??? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I've used WordPerfect with proportional fonts and it worked, but only after MANY hours of tweaking the width tables within WP. The furnished tables were so far off as to be laughable. I'm using a QuadLaser and one of the included utilities is a font editor. So I first tweaked all the characters in the font itself so they were "right" (making a note of the final widths), then modified the WP tables to match. Not a job for the faint of heart! Actually at this point I had ONE font that was right -- but it was in Quad's format. Luckily they also include a Quad-to-HP utility that takes a Quad font and puts it into HP format. So as I say, after much time and effort I have just one font that I'm happy with. But I have to first download the font, then select the appropriate printer definition, then hope I got everything right. If I did, it all works OK. There's gotta be a better way! Date: 05-01-87 (08:16) Number: 499 To: BOB FOSTER Refer#: NONE From: DAN MOORE Read: NO Subj: WHEN YOU ARE REALLY POOR! Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Not really. Being poor forces you to seek less expensive alternatives. Our company has money, but, for example, we settled on Kenn Flee's QFiler rather than a dozen other commercial programs which are more expensive but certainly not more functional. Date: 05-01-87 (10:28) Number: 501 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: 498 From: DON KELLEY Read: YES Subj: PROPORTIONAL FONTS ??? Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I agree there must be a better way and that is why I try not to use Word Perfect whenever I can use another word processor. The only true value of WP I have discovered in that is does do change bars better than an;y other package. WS2000 does the proportional spacing handling for you in a very good maner. I haven't used MS Word that much as yet but plan to get into it deeply soon as everyone reports it to best support the laser printer. Date: 05-02-87 (04:50) Number: 502 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: QUADLASER FONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE As all you folks are going banannas over the new HPII's, I just received my new QuadLaser 1101 (the latest). And among the outstanding features of this printer is that is comes standard with LOTS of typeset-quality fonts: Point sizes 6-8-10-12-14-16-24-36 in both Helvtica and TimesRoman in 4 faces, roman (normal), italic, bold and bold italic. The fonts are apparently furnished by Bitstream and also are quite obviously optimized for the reverse imaging of the Ricoh engine as opposed to the Canon engine. Reason I can tell is that the furnished fonts with Ventura (for HP) are pinched in some sizes, whereas the same sizes and faces are perfect in the Quad version. Now I'll convert the Quad fonts to downloadable HP fonts and modifiy Ventura to recognize 'em. Add to all that a font editor, a bunch of OTHER fonts (18 disks all told), a copy of FormTool, and even more utilities -- including ones for Unix -- and the extras make this admittedly expensive printer more worth considering. -Kenn- Date: 05-02-87 (05:01) Number: 503 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KENN FLEE Read: (N/A) Subj: QUADLASER HP+ EMULATION Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE FLASH -- (for Quadlaser users). There have been some reported problems with the newest 1101 controller, running HPPLUS.RAM, under Ventura. Symptoms were broken and shifted characters on very complex pages (like the "Scoop" sample chapter in Ventura). "Normal" pages ran fine. I got a new 1101 today, and sure as shootin, the problem was there. In a fit of anger, I signed onto Quad's BBS support board to leave an appropriate message, and was greeted with: "New HPPLUS.RAM available for download". And I'm pleased to report that this newest HPPLUS emulation program solves the problem: at least "Scoop" prints out OK now. If there are ANY other QuadLaser users out there, I'll be more than happy to upload the file here... just leave me a message. If not, eat your heart out (see message #502). PS: New HPPLUS.RAM has a file date of 4-26-87 and a filesize of 49,024. -Kenn- Date: 05-03-87 (01:10) Number: 504 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: DAVE O'DONAHUE Read: (N/A) Subj: VENTURA FONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Has anyone ben able to use the soft fonts in Ventura, in any other package other than VP. It was easy to use one of the TMS font as default but the point size was not correct. Does anyone know if its possible to use VP fonts in Word or some other program. Thanks. Will Call next week for the answer. Dave from Calif. Date: 05-03-87 (15:55) Number: 505 To: DAVE O'DONAHUE Refer#: 504 From: KENN FLEE Read: YES Subj: VENTURA FONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I have used the Ventura fonts with another Desktop package, SCLaserPlus, on a QuadLaser running under HP+ emulation. They worked just fine. All this was necessary because the morderately complex page I was printing would hang under Ventura, but run in SCLaserPlus. -Ken- Date: 05-05-87 (06:46) Number: 507 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 385 From: KARIN HELSTROM Read: YES Subj: FONT SIZES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Thanks. Unless you use the extended characters, it doesn't make sense to buy the Roman 8. I did buy the Prestige Elite soft fonts. It comes with the fonts in all different sets - Roman 8, USASCII, just the Roman8 extension, and with and without the math extensions. Apparently all the Roman8 characters are 8 bit. The USASCII are 7 bit, requiring less space. Date: 05-05-87 (06:49) Number: 508 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: KARIN HELSTROM Read: (N/A) Subj: PHILA. LASER CONF. Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I like this conference so much that I started a laser conference on the Philadelphia IBM Club's BBS. 215-635-5227. We only have a few messages up, but give us a call. Date: 05-06-87 (07:06) Number: 509 To: BOB GREENE Refer#: 492 From: MIKE BIRD Read: YES Subj: HP LJET II AND WORDPERFEC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Here is another "none" answer. WordPerfect comes with a program that allows you to define new printer, or in this case, new font definitions to be used in WordPerfect. Unfortunatly this requires a bit of tech. knowledge of the font you are going to define. The program is called "PRINTER". The documentation for the program is on the disk, I beleive the file name is either "PRINT.DOC" or "DOCUMENT.PRT". One idea that came to me is to set the horizontal motion index (HMI) to a number greater tham what is used for standard ps point size fonts. This might trick WP into thinking that the actual spacing of your 24 pt font is the same as a 10 point font. I have not attempted to use downloaded fonts at this point. But when I do I will look to the printer program to solve any problems first. Another little tip that may be usefull is to use F8 (Print Format) A (Insert printer command) to insert the font select command directly into your document. I hope some of this can be useful to you. Date: 05-07-87 (00:30) Number: 513 To: DAN MOORE Refer#: 481 From: JOHN MOON Read: YES Subj: MIRCOSOFT Z CARTRIDGE Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The lineprinter font (landscape) on the Z cartridge does not seem accesible as other landscape lineprinter fonts are. I can not get PPRINT of LJ2 to work with that font. I have managed to switch into the font by sending it the long esc sequence, but this method will not allow me what I want to do -- Print two pages of documentation on one sheet of paper in Landscape mode. Does anyone have contact with the author of LJ2? Date: 05-07-87 (00:33) Number: 514 To: DAN MOORE Refer#: NONE From: JOHN MOON Read: YES Subj: MIRCOSOFT Z CARTRIDGE Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I think I will also have a LJII in another week or so. It should be really nice.... I especially like the ability of it to take downloaded fonts over 30pt, now up to 600pt or something riduclous like that. About the Z catridge, is Microsoft planning a release of a new PRD that supports at least the LINEPRINTER portrait font? That is something that is really necessary for some of the work I do. Maybe someone has already succesfully modified their PRD file to include lineprinter portrait. (if they did please upload it here!) Date: 05-07-87 (08:04) Number: 516 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: LASERJET II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Well, we just got it, so there's little experience to speak from. I'd say the increased capacity input tray is nice. Printed sheets are stacked face down on top of the printer, in the right sequence, which is also nice. The control panel LCD display is more useful than the cryptic numeric display on earlier models. The projected footprint is smaller. The two cartridge slots are nice, but we will have to tweak a number of Microsoft Word print drivers so that we can use dual cartridges. The self-test prints all internal and loaded cartridge fonts, another nice touch. Print density, at least from early tests, looks great, but then it looked very good on the earlier models. The machine uses a new, longer life toner cartridge. I'll comment further as we gain more experience. Date: 05-07-87 (08:06) Number: 517 To: JOHN MOON Refer#: 513 From: DAN MOORE Read: NO Subj: MIRCOSOFT Z CARTRIDGE Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE You are not alone. The official Microsoft Word print driver for the Z cartridge (which was developed jointly by Microsoft and HP) does not support that font either. Microsoft has flaky excuses as to why this is so (a 7-bit font or something like that). Date: 05-07-87 (23:48) Number: 519 To: JOHN MOON Refer#: 513 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: NO Subj: MIRCOSOFT Z CARTRIDGE Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE John - do you use soft fonts at all or do you have a Laserjet II? I have LJ2 set up with a batch file that downloads a landscape compressed lineprinter font before LJ2 prints the file but unfortunately the compressed landscape font is proprietary so I can't upload it. The Laserjet II has the landscape lineprinter as one of the default fonts. You could,y'know set up a batch file for LJ2 that first issues the long ESC sequence to the printer to set landscape lineprinter as the primary font - then execute LJ2 to print your file. Date: 05-08-87 (00:01) Number: 522 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: (N/A) Subj: HP AND POSTSCRIPT Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE In case anyone missed it, PC Week and InfoWorld had articles this week about Hewlett Packard announcing that they will, after all, join the rest of the laser printer world in supporting Postscript printer description language (IBM announced support awhile ago & AppleLaser has used it from the beginning) Postscript will be available from unnamed 3rd party for Laserjet but with HP's blessings. DDL will also be available as an alternative printer description language. Anyway that seems like good news for improved standardization among laser printers. Date: 05-08-87 (22:05) Number: 526 To: JOHN MOON Refer#: NONE From: JIM WARGULA Read: NO Subj: HP LJET II AND WORDPERFEC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE WordPerfect's new printer disk supports the LJ II nicely. font cart's are apparently accessed the same as before for the + model. jlw Date: 05-13-87 (11:00) Number: 529 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: DON KELLEY Read: YES Subj: LASERJET II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Thought I'd stick my two cents worth in on this topic. We had an old (original) HP Laser Jet that we recently traded in for the Series II model and are VERY happy with it. The capability to change paper and NOT have to press the continue or on-line switch is a handy improvement and has saved on time when non-computer people are watching the machine for a large print out. The cheaper memory upgrade capability is a very nice feature we hope to take advantage of soon. Also, the I/O slot which will permit Postscript and/or DDL in the future is a great enhancement. Another great feature is the fact you don't have to resort a 600 page document to get it in proper order. So far, we have gotten over 6000 sheets out of the original toner cartridge and the prints still look great. That is an order of magnitude better than the old unit. We are just getting into the soft font area and hope to be able to do great things with them. Date: 05-14-87 (03:16) Number: 532 To: DAN MOORE Refer#: NONE From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: CARTRIDGE Z Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I hate to knock my favorite word processor, Dan, but using Volkswriter 3 with the Z cartridge sucks! I had to set up a special memo shell with a long escape sequence to even use it. Even though it is the only cartridge installed, without use of the esc sequence, the print defaults to the built-in courier font Using a special shell isn't all that bad BUT the problem in Volkswriter 3 is that whenever you do almost anything special (like boldface or italics), it causes print to revert to courier and you have to imbed the escape code again. That problem does not occur with any other cartridges that we have so must be a lot different about the Z. I'll have to play with it some more...can maybe figure out some fix for that. I like having the 12 point option as well as the 10 point and having the HELV on the same cartridge as the Times Roman font BUT I think the spacing on the 10 point is too tight. I like the spacing better on the 10 pt Times Roman F cartridge better. That's what we mostly use and we really like the output from that. Date: 05-15-87 (09:40) Number: 534 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 531 From: DON KELLEY Read: YES Subj: LASERJET II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I'm located in sunny Arlington, VA at the present time. So far have purchased HP's Letter Gothic soft disk and three different fonts from Weaver Graphics. Am still working to get them integrated with WordStar Version 4 and also WS2000. Waiting for another copy of MS Word to show up to play with that. The other day I uploaded another soft font loader called FONTIC.ARC. So far, it is the most sophisticated one I have run across and easier to use than the ones written in BASIC and even better than HP's PCLPAK as far as downloads go. I have worked up a bunch of batch files to do my basic font downloading for various types of desired documents with different font requirements. Date: 05-15-87 (17:30) Number: 535 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 532 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: CARTRIDGE Z Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The reason we wanted to access it on the cartridge was that our former HPLJ vanilla non-plus model did not have it built-in. Since then we acquired a LJ+ and now we have two LJIIs, so it is of no importance. The principle of the thing, I guess, what with the Z cartridge bearing the Microsoft Name and their OWN print driver not supporting all the fonts in there... Another neat feature of the LJII: manual feed is done via a self-centering, adjustable slot that is on top of the paper input tray. I was toying with it. Looks like you have new escape sequences for paper sizes such as envelopes, and the margins are set automatically. The envelopes also feed thru there very smoothly unlike the older models which had this unadvertised but consistent paper crinkling feature. I think I'll develop a MS Word .PRD for printing envelopes on the LJII, it should be easy. For those using MS Word and the LJII, the folks in Redmond told me that a freebie PRD diskette will be available just about right now from your Microsoft dealer, allowing use of dual cartridges and the additional built-in fonts. Date: 05-15-87 (20:49) Number: 536 To: DON KELLEY Refer#: 534 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: LASERJET II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE You can download fonts also with DOS COPY /B option - made for fasted downloads than any commercial downloader I tried. Examples of that in FONTS.ARC in directory 22. Date: 05-16-87 (10:49) Number: 539 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: HANK WEISS Read: (N/A) Subj: SCANNER RENTAL (BORROW?) Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Just got PageMaker for the PC to use with an AST TurboLaser. My first newsletter is underway and it would be nice to scan in the logo of my project and one or two graphs. I would like to know if any fortunate soul is interested and able to loan time on their so I can see the results. Eventually, I hope out computer center (I work for the state) will get one, but time will tell. As I only would need a handful of scans every few months its hard to justify purchase. Date: 05-16-87 (23:22) Number: 541 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: TODD DENNISON Read: YES Subj: HELLO Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Hi Marty, I thought that I would introduce myself. I am calling from New Jersey. I am a systems analyst working for a company that does computer projects for the government. I am a HP laser jet technician (trained by HP) for whatever that is worth. I have used the new HP scanner a little. It is really nice but at the present I am told will not import into a word processor, no "ocr". I have a dest. Good... but I wish it was a flat bed. I own 2 lasers one is a PLUS. I have been using Word with the lasers and using a few of the cartidges. I was a Beta test site for Zyad and BDT. The BDT is THE ONLY way to go. I think I have told you alll I can about myself. Except that I am very tired at this hour. This board and conference are GREAT. Would you do me a favor and move your system closer so it doesn't cost me soooo much to dial in??? Date: 05-17-87 (17:04) Number: 543 To: KENN FLEE Refer#: 502 From: GARY SINGER Read: YES Subj: QUADLASER FONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I second your opinion, Ken! I just got my upgrade pack and I'm very impressed with the Bitstream fonts... even though I spent many hours tweaking the old fonts, I've completely thrown them out in favor of the new ones. I'm in the process of converting them all to HP format. I just received SOFT CRAFT's Font Editor. There are a number of problems with it, but once I get a copy that can do what they say it can do, I expect I can do good things with so many fonts! PS: should I hold on to my 2.04 EPROMS or send them back?? Date: 05-17-87 (18:27) Number: 546 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: CARTRIDGE Z Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I do not attack other WPs, but I am impressed with Word's support of Lasers in general, and its long list of other features. It comes with one of the best on-disk tutorials ever, accessible from the WP itself if you need a refresher course. And its support of the mouse is unequalled. If you use Word, then Laserfonts is a Godsend. Date: 05-17-87 (22:34) Number: 549 To: TODD DENNISON Refer#: 541 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: NO Subj: HELLO Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Welcome to the conference Todd. We really appreciate your telling us about yourself and your laserjet applications. We had at first considered making a questionaire script for conference joiners but decided not to in hopes that people would volunteer the info as you have Thanks again for that....you shouldn't complain about LD costs though with the number of excellent boards you have in New York/New Jersey area. I have several questions from your message. Is the HP scanner being sol retail yet or do you have an early version. Ant idea of street price for it? Does it scan only in graphics mode and that's the reason the output is not word processor compatable? Date: 05-18-87 (07:37) Number: 555 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 549 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: HELLO Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Aren't Zyad and BDT names of companies that manufacture multi-bin sheet feeders for the LJ printers? Date: 05-18-87 (07:44) Number: 556 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 554 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: CARTRIDGE Z Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE After almost 2 years with Word, I have found that certain functions can be performed far faster with the keyboard then the mouse, or vice-versa. For example, highlighting a chunk of text that spans paragraph boundaries is much faster via the mouse. Also, copying letter, word, sentence, or paragraph formatting is much faster via a mouse. Setting tabs is faster. In a nutshell, the mouse is much more of a 'direct-access' device, whereas the cursor is sequential in nature. Word implements a number of functions which are mouse-only, such as highlighting a paragraph, setting up windows in the display, etc...These features do not require accessing the standard tree-structured function menus via the keyboard. Some of this is kind of hard to describe in a message. I hope you get my meaning. Date: 05-18-87 (07:52) Number: 557 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: DAN MOORE Read: (N/A) Subj: SOFT FONT UL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I uled HELVFONT.ARC, another PD soft-font set for the LJ+. Haven't actually tried it, but looks OK. First one to try gives the rest of us feedback, OK. Date: 05-18-87 (09:33) Number: 558 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: GARY SINGER Read: YES Subj: QUADLASER FONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I'm using the Bitstream fonts on a QuadLaser with HP LJ+ emulation. Date: 05-18-87 (09:35) Number: 559 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: GARY SINGER Read: YES Subj: FONT EDITOR Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Re: Font Editor. They sent a program and documentation both dated from Sept. 86! After I confronted them on this, they agreed to send me a newer version that supports EGA. The dox are terrible. I can only hope that the newer version will be better. I don't know, I feel ripped off to some degree. My feeling is that they are quick to take my money and send me products that are not even beta-level and which are antiquated! Date: 05-18-87 (11:46) Number: 561 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTIN REUBEN Read: (N/A) Subj: 66 LINES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE There is a menu selection in Guy Gallo's Laserjet Program (ver 4.4) that allows you to "tweak" the printer to 66 lines. This is a very handy feature that I would like to put into a batch file so that it loads automatically when I boot. Can anyone tell me what that code is and what would be the best way to send it to the printer from DOS? Date: 05-18-87 (21:01) Number: 564 To: DAN MOORE Refer#: 556 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: CARTRIDGE Z Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Yes I think I understand better. Also, since Word is graphics oriented rather than text oriented, the mouse may have more function there than in some other word processors. Is Word the only graphics display word processor? Date: 05-19-87 (00:35) Number: 566 To: MARTIN REUBEN Refer#: 561 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: 66 LINES Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Martin - I don't know if your need to set the Laserjet to 66 lines per page is a general need or not. In the event it is a need others have also, I created and uploaded the file HP-SET66.ARC. Date: 05-19-87 (01:49) Number: 567 To: SYSOP Refer#: NONE From: FREDERICK BARTHELME Read: YES Subj: VENTURA/JLASER Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Looks like a terrific BBS -- esp the message base in the laser conf. One tip--maybe everybody already knows this--but if you use Ventura with the JLaser card, the simple expedient of switching the .WID files to the Postscript one will allow you to set up to 48 point Helvetica & Times. The type is real ragged, of course, so it's no good except for semi-informal posters and similar, but in the smaller sizes there are some additional styles available (an 18 pt ital etc) that are very usable. Don't know why this works of course, but then, neither do the folks at Tall Tree, so I don't feel so bad about not knowing. Anyway, great board. I'll be back after having read the message base and looked over the files. Thanks for letting me on. FB Date: 05-19-87 (07:20) Number: 570 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 564 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: CARTRIDGE Z Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I think Lotus' Manuscript is also a graphics WP. Glad you brought it up, tho. I use Word with an EGA. The display is second to none. It shows bold, underline, italics, sub- and superscript, double underline, strikethrough on the screen. It also supports 43-line mode. Hard to beat. Date: 05-19-87 (07:24) Number: 572 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 536 From: DON KELLEY Read: YES Subj: LASERJET II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The Weaver Graphics Fonts are very nicely formed. They come in Portrait orientation with a program that permits you to make a version in Landscape mode of all the sizes. They have an ad in PC Publishing -- that's the only place I've seen it. I'll have to bring in a copy so I can give you the address/phone number since I don't have it here at the office. Yes I do use in my batch files the DOS COPY /B option to upload the soft fonts. However, rather than remember the codes for the font ID Number, I set up a 'PRE0, PRE1 etc' file and a 'POST0, POST1, etc' file to take care of sending the ID number and permanent status to the printer. This way I use: copy /b PRE0 + filename.ext + POST0 lpt1: > null. This does it all in one line. The FONTID program does the same thing as far as ID numbers goes so you don't have to remember the exact code or have as many small files around as my first method. Also, with the LJ Series II, you can use any ID number up to 32K so the FONTID program is a bit more flexible. So it takes three lines of code in a batch file. With a hard disk, you eat up so much space with a cluster anyway, so why not make the batch file a bit more easier for others to understand. Date: 05-19-87 (14:55) Number: 574 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MAURICE THALER Read: (N/A) Subj: MOVING MY HP II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Well I guesse I really screwed up! I wanted to move my HP Series II and did not see anywhere in the manual about instructions on moving the sucker after it was set up. I ASSumed that I should remove the EP cartridge before I moved it so it would not spill toner dust inside the machine. Well, after setting it up again and re-inserting the cart. , I find that it only prints on the left third of the page. The man at the store where this machine was purchased said that the cart might have been exposed to light! Well, after several hours of sitting in the dark of the machine, it has not improved any. I thought I would share this experience so others will not have the same problem. I suppose what I should have done is put the cart. in a DARK bag, and taken special care to not tip it from the horizontal position it sits in normally. This is a rather expensive mistake which I blame at least partially on HP for not explaining specifically in their manual on how to preform an often needed operation... moving the machine! Date: 05-19-87 (22:09) Number: 576 To: DON KELLEY Refer#: 572 From: MARTY SHANNON Read: YES Subj: LASERJET II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Is PC Publishing that real expensive magazine? ($100+ per year). I get Publish which is OK but too much MAC stuff. Date: 05-20-87 (03:24) Number: 580 To: DAVE O'DONAHUE Refer#: 504 From: RICK BARNETT Read: NO Subj: VENTURA FONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Dave, the fonts supplied with VP are standard 'SOFTFONT' format and as such are perfectly suitable for downloading and use in other applications. To facilitate your software package learning the correct character width (as these fonts differ markedly from the HP SOFTFONT widths, there is a utility package available from VS Associates that makes character width tables for WordPerfect, MS Word and allows you to add more fonts to VENTURA. Their phone number is (501)376-2083 and the package is LASER WORDPROCESSOR TOOLKIT. It has saved me many agonizing hours of drudgery. Hope you find it useful fix for your problem. Rick Barnett, PRINTERS PLUS, Inc. (202)223-9007 Date: 05-20-87 (03:29) Number: 581 To: MIKE BIRD Refer#: 509 From: RICK BARNETT Read: NO Subj: HP LJET II AND WORDPERFEC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Mike, you are asking for trouble when you add an embedded font change command for a PS font. WP will use the character table of the last font called from print format menu. A beetter method is to get the VS utility disk and make seperate definitions for the set of 8 most frequently used fonts. VS's number is (501)376-2083 Rick Barnett, PrKŪnters Plus (202)223-9007 Date: 05-20-87 (06:51) Number: 583 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTIN REUBEN Read: (N/A) Subj: XYWRITE Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Any XyWrite users out there? I've got the HP "Z" cartridge and the new Xywrite printer file that supports it. The manual is less than crystal clear on how to embed the font codes in the text. This is probably something incredibly easy that I'm missing... Date: 05-20-87 (07:07) Number: 585 To: RICK BARNETT Refer#: 580 From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: VENTURA FONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Now that is good information, thanks Rick. Marty, should we compile a list of fonts/utilities and their sources and make it available for dl....each with a small capsule summary, vendor name, location, phone etc... Date: 05-20-87 (16:51) Number: 587 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: MARTIN REUBEN Read: (N/A) Subj: LASERCONTROL 100 Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Has anyone had any experience with LaserControl 100? I received a mailing from HP about it. What does it do and how does it do it? Date: 05-21-87 (03:58) Number: 593 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 497 From: BOB GREENE Read: YES Subj: HP LJET II AND WORDPERFEC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE PCLPAK seems to work ok, but certainly not for the faint of heart! I have a lot of novice users, and am looking for some "automated" way of helping them. Best results so far are by using a cartridge. Aldus has promised me that they will support character spacing tables as soon as they become available from HP, but I think the real answer is that they're working mostly on Postscript stuff right now. Date: 05-21-87 (04:00) Number: 594 To: MIKE BIRD Refer#: 509 From: BOB GREENE Read: NO Subj: HP LJET II AND WORDPERFEC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Yes, I finally found the F8 A command, and seems to work ok with a cartridge - the real problem is the lack of character spacing tables in the downloadable fonts that I have. Date: 05-21-87 (08:11) Number: 596 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: NONE From: DAN MOORE Read: YES Subj: VENTURA FONTS Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Sure, why not. Of course the only one I know of right now is Laserfonts, but soon I may know more about others. I am getting info on the VS stuff, the Orbit stuff, and the Polaris stuff. Anyone with info should participate. I will upload whatever I come up with as ARCed (PKARC 3.5) ASCII files 65-wide, justified. I will leave the file name with you. Date: 05-21-87 (09:50) Number: 598 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 536 From: DON KELLEY Read: YES Subj: LASERJET II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE This is a further answer to my partial answer about Weaver Graphics soft fonts and type styles. Their address is: Weaver Graphics Fox Pavilion Box 1132 Jenkintown, PA 19046 (215) 884-9286 They have at least 32 different disks (at 29.99 each) with many type styles such as Avant Gard, Bookman, Courier, Century Schoolbook, Helvetica, Palantino and Times Roman. Each disk or type style seems to come with 12 point sizes from 6 point thru 30 point. They do provide a program to translate Portrait style to Landscape style for each of the sizes and types. Their download software is primitive but it works. However with some of the PD programs for downloading such as FONTID.ARC or SOFTLOAD.ARC or the same download program that comes with HELVFONT.ARC, you don't need to use their routines. They do claim to have font type sizes larger than 30 point for the Series II, but I have not seen any samples as yet. Date: 05-21-87 (09:51) Number: 599 To: MARTY SHANNON Refer#: 576 From: DON KELLEY Read: YES Subj: LASERJET II Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE No, PC Publishing is another magazine, not the expensive one. Just for general info, I'll list those three that I am familiar with for everyone's benefit. PC Publishing Magazine Hunter Publishing Company 950 Lee Street Des Plaines, IL 60016 (312) 296-0770 $36.00 per year. Mostly done with DTP software and printed on 300 dpi laser printers. Does a fair job of covering the issues as well as reviews of the DTP packages, hints and techniques. Personal Publishing The Renegade Company P.O. Box 390 Itasca, IL 60143 $30.00 per year. Also mostly done with DTP software and printed at 300 dpi, except for ads and other minor items. This one is more professionally done and well worth the money. Publish PCW Communications Inc. 501 Second St. #600 San Francisco, CA 94107 (800) 525-0643 $39.90 per year. Slick publication professionally done. I am not impressed. Hope it gets better now that it's gone monthly. Date: 05-21-87 (13:29) Number: 600 To: BOB GREENE Refer#: 593 From: MAURICE THALER Read: NO Subj: HP LJET II AND WORDPERFEC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE What you need is HPUTIL which can be obtained from Word Perfect corp. It has a macro to create a driver for your soft fonts with the proper spacing and then all you do is print ONE file after turning on your machine. This file contains 8 fonts, like any standard WordPerfect printer def. It is by far the easiest way I have seen to drive the HP from Word Perfect. I just keep a sample of the printer test as a cheat sheet to know which font and pitch to ask for when imbedding font changes.