Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!pasteur!ic.Berkeley.EDU!whitcomb
From: whitcomb@ic.Berkeley.EDU (Gregg Whitcomb)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Need Help: Shakespeare/PostScript/Laser Printer
Message-ID: <4482@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: 15 Jul 88 15:42:16 GMT
References: <4858@gryphon.CTS.COM> <377@obi-wan>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu
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Lines: 55

In article <4858@gryphon.CTS.COM>, richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
> 
> In article <377@obi-wan> sgate@stsci.EDU (Steve Southgate) writes:
> >
> >Called Infinity.  Described the scenario.  Their guy said they'd never had
> >their postscript output NOT work.  He was surprized, but couldn't really
> >be difinitive because, after all, this wasn't a supported procedure.
> 
> Amazing.
> 
> A friend of mine ws reviewing this package for a magazine. He kept
> emailing me PostScript files.
> 
> They flat out did not work. The illustrations cale out all one colour
> (grey) ans the text came out clipped along the left margin. Now if these
> were files of his own making I might have some sympathy. But these were the
> demo files supplied with the package.
> 
> -- 
>       If you were to flatten out Wales, it would be bigger than England.
> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM                               {backbone}!gryphon!richard


I have had some postscript problems with Shakespeare as well but have been
able to get ok output.  I wouldn't advise anyone to buy the program for
the postscript capability.   I was unimpressed with its lack of text
handling capability which is practically nil.  On the good side, it does
very well with pictures.  Another problem with the postscript generation
is that since Shakespeare doesn't understand what the postscript font
sizes are, it s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s text to make sure a full line of text
on your screen takes a full line on the postscript output.  If you're
lucky enough to have the postscript fonts on the Amiga, this may not
be much of a problem.  It would also have been nice if they provided
a "scale" operation (analogous to the postscript scale command) so that
if I want 3'' postscript characters, I can get them without using a 216
point font size!  In fact, since such a point size doesn't exist in
postscript (most are in the 10-30 range), Shakespeare simply dumps a
bit map for fonts of that size.  There are tricks you can play with
the dpi value you assign to your documents (you can thus get the 
3'' postscript fonts if you really need them), however, I can't possibly
see how regular text size characters and 2'' title characters could
possibly be incorporated on the postscript output easily.  So what
does this all mean...

I can't recommend Shakespeare for standard desktop publishing which
is heavy on the text side.  I DO recommend Shakespeare for doing
posters which incorporate lots of figures and minimal text.  Finally,
don't get Shakespeare if you want a Postscript desktop publishing
package.  If you have a nice color printer (HP paintjet, NEC CP6), then
you will be pleased with what you can get it to do.  



-Gregg Whitcomb
whitcomb@ic.berkeley.edu