CompuServe Messages

Vic, Just to add to what David has said… The LaserJets have three ways of printing. You can send ASCII text and get very nice Courier output (or whatever happens to be built into your printer – don't know about the Oki). A font cartridge counts as a built-in (if you have font carts). Second way, downloadable (soft fonts). This is a collection of bitmaps to describe face, size and style. You can DL several fonts and use escape chrs to tell the LJ to look up different font data. This method has two modes. If done when the printer is first turned on and they are made resident, you get excellent throughput. In the other mode, the fonts are DL'd with each print job. This amounts to significant overhead and reduces throughput. Most PC apps will let you choose in this regard. If there are any Ami apps that let you DL fonts to LJ's, I don't know what they are. I expect they would include their own driver. If you're going to DL fonts, you'll want to have at least 1.5MB in the LJ. The third method is to let the computer generate the bitmap for everything; i.e. you're not sending ASCII anymore. This amounts to a LOT of data and I expect it's how most Amiga apps support LJ's. And consequently, I think that HP's soft fonts would be unlikely to do anything for you. FWIW, my preferred solution would be to get the LJ with a PostScript cart. That way you've got the standard 35 PS fonts "built-in". Once again you'll need to have at least 1.5MB. (I think most LJ's and compatible come with 512K.) Excellence! will use the PS fonts but only allows particular sizes. A bad shortcoming of E!, IMHO. Yes, the LJ driver on the extras disk will work with the Series II's though it has some quirks. Evidently, there's been a new release of that driver (though one person told me it still has quirks). Using PostScript, the quirks disappear and there IS a PS preferences driver. Malcolm