CompuServe Messages

[ continuation ] means. Imagine the plight of the imagesetter operator trying to anticipate just what he is dealing with from a myriad of sources. Some files have one of the Negative/Mirror operators on, some both, some neither, and almost none of the senders of such files can really tell him what combination they have actually sent him! Chaos. The only way to avoid the chaos is to assume that every file has _both_ operators off and to isolate the PostScript interpreter from that particular kind of PostScript code. This requires the imagesetter operator (human type) to manually control the machine for Negative and Mirror output. Some manufacturers have done just this. Unfortunately, they have not been consistent across their model lines, and some cannot even tell you which of their machines do this or not! Therefore, the only way to get reliability, is to leave these settings alone. Always prepare output for an imagetter as though it is intended to print as a positive image with the image unreversed left to right, looking at the emulsion side of the imaging material. In other words, the way it would look coming out of a laser printer (or dot matrix for that matter). Then tell the service bureau what kind of output you need. Let them control their machine in this respect. True, after dealing with a particular bureau, they may tell you to prepare your output in a different way. But as general advice, I stick by my position. Also, many imagestetters _do_ image all the way to the edge of the imaging media. Mine images all the way to the edge of its 12 inch capacity. The user _should_ ask the service bureau what their capability actually is. But I certainly won't argue that 11.7" on a 12 inch machine is a conservative number which will avoid some potential problems. Unfortunately, it will also limit some jobs which need that last few millimeters to get the crop marks on. All this discussion underlines the importance of treating output to a high resolution device differently from sending output to an 8.5 x 11 capacity laser [ MORE ]