Laser Printer for a Small Network of Suns?

[Robert Perlberg]

In article <8905151454.AA01264 at Jester.CC.MsState.Edu>, peters at cc.msstate.edu (Frank W. Peters) writes:
>We are in the very first stages of purchasing a laser printer to serve a
>small network of suns (3/160 serving 7 3/50s three of which would be using
>the printer on a regular basis).  I'd like to hear people's opinions of
>the issues involved and evaluations of various printers.  We'd also like
>to hear what software exists to help support such devices (I've heard
>mention of a package called transcript?).

We have an Apple LaserWriter, an Imagen 24/300, and an HP LaserJet
2686A.

The Imagen is a very old model.  They admit to having a lot of problems
with it and claim that the new ones are much better, but I can't vouch for
that.  The Imagen uses a language called Impress for which we have
software supplied by Imagen which includes everything you need to use the
printer on a Sun, including the printcap entry.  They have newer printers
which also understand postscript.  We don't really know how to use Impress
and don't have any software that lets us do anything sophisticated with
it.  We can just print ASCII files in portrait, landscape, or landscape
with two columns.  The only reason we use this printer is because it is
faster than any of the desk top printers (the Imagen stands on the floor).

The LaserWriter was purchased from Sun as a "Sun LaserWriter", but it's
really an Apple with a Sun logo pasted on.  The LaserWriter speaks
postscript and we got the transcript package for it from Sun.  Transcript
includes everything you need to use the LaserWriter, or any other
postscript printer (or at least, that's what I would assume to be the
case; I haven't yet tried to use it with another postscript printer),
including the printcap entry.  It also comes with a set of front end
programs for converting various types of files (ASCII, Sun rasterfiles,
troff, etc.) into postscript, with various options (different fonts,
sizes, orientations, title blocks, image scaling, etc.).

Sun does not support the HP LaserJet, but I was able to write all of the
software we needed for it myself.  And Sun was very helpful even though
they don't officially support it.  I asked Sun a question about getting
the handshaking to work and they sent me a printcap entry and rasterfile
filter that were submitted by another user.

The only advantage of the HP is that it's cheap.  Its major disadvantages
are that it can't print in any combination of font, size, and orientation
(only those that are supported by your font cartridge), it has limited
memory, so it can't print high resolution rasterfiles, it has no graphics
capabilities other than bitmap printing, it doesn't run postscript which
makes it impossible to use all of the neat postscript stuff that gets
posted to the net all the time.  and it's next to impossible to mix
graphics and text.  The HP series II has more memory, but I don't know
whether that makes much of a difference since I haven't yet tried to use a
series II with the Sun.  The LaserWriter has none of these problems.

Robert Perlberg
Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., New York
phri!{dasys1 | philabs | mancol}!step!perl
	-- "I am not a language ... I am a free man!"