Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!cambridge.apple.com!alms
From: alms@cambridge.apple.com (Andrew L. M. Shalit)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: HP LaserJet IIP
Message-ID: 
Date: 3 Oct 89 16:13:08 GMT
Sender: news@cambridge.apple.com
Distribution: comp.sys.mac
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 71


First the moral:

  When HP says "The DeskWriter is our supported Macintosh printer, not
  the Laserjet IIP", you should believe them.

Now the rest of the story:

After spending a couple of days with a IIP and MacPrint software, I've
come to the conclusion that it isn't a desirable solution for printing
on the Macintosh.  I'm going to try to return my printer to the store
where I got it;  that failing, I'll sell it on the open market.

Disclaimer:  I may not completely understand how this printer and
software are supposed to work.  I may have missed something.  This message
is based on my understanding after spending a few sessions of a couple
hours each trying to get acceptible performance out of the printer.


In the base configuration, the IIP is a very nice letter-quality printer.
It's small, light, and very cute.  It's 300 dpi, but memory limitations
keep it from doing a full page at that resolution.

I thought the IIP came with Courier, Times, Helvetica, and Symbol, in a
variety of sizes.  It doesn't.  It comes only with Courier, in 10 and 12
point.  Any other fonts have to be loaded from cartridges or built from
bit-maps in your computer.

Printing with a built-in font (i.e. Courier 10 or 12 point) is quite
fast, and doesn't eat up the printer's memory.  However, printing
anything else is *very* slow.  Slow means 2-4 minutes a page.  Also,
using Macintosh fonts basically sends bits to the printer, so you
can't print a whole page of single spaced 300 dpi text. Of course, it
tries for 2 or 3 minutes before telling you it's out of memory.

MacPrint comes with 4 bitmap fonts.  These come in huge sizes, so that
they can be scaled down for 300dpi printing (much like the laserwriter
SC, I believe).  Each font takes about 350K.  I had a couple of problems
with these fonts.  First off, they give them non-standard names.  So,
instead of 'Times' there is 'CS Times';  instead of 'Courier' there is
'CS Courier'.  This means that if I have a thirty page document of
mixed Times and Courier, it won't use the MacPrint fonts.  I'm
supposed to go through my document and manually change every use of
Times into CS Times.  I guess they don't think people will be working
in mixed environments, where you want to print documents on one printer
or another.  The other problem was that the quality of the screen fonts
(e.g. the 12-point of Times) was extremely poor.  Some of the characters
just looked like splotches of pixels.  You could only tell what they were
by the context within a word.

I managed to get around both the font problems, but it took a little
work.  First, I renamed the fonts using ResEdit.  Then, I replaced
the screen sizes with the same fonts from the Apple system.  This may
have wreaked havoc with wysiwyg printing, but I don't really care about
that.  I mostly just want nice looking text.

Even when I got the fonts basically working, I was still stuck by the
fact that I couldn't print a full page of letter quality text in anything
but Courier 10 or 12.  There are two ways I could upgrade the printer:
buy a font cartridge (will give fast printing but for a limited number
of type faces;  plus, the only cartridges come with non-standard named
fonts, e.g. TmsRmn instead of Times), or buy more memory (gives lots
of flexibility for $400, but still prints dog-slow).  Instead I think
I'm going to sell the printer and price out a PLP from General
Computer.

  sigh.  Live and learn.

     -andrew

disclaimer again:  my opinions are my own, not my companies.