CompuServe Messages

Dennis, (Before I begin, I have a correction: Rag (or "ragged") Right means the right hand edge of a column is unevenly set, not the other way around, as I said in my previous message.) A laser printer places electric charges on a drum, to which toner sticks and is then transferred to paper and "fused" to it at high temperatures. Repro (or Resin Coated paper), which is the most common output from an imagesetter, is specially treated paper that is exposed to light and then developed (much like the film in a camera). A negative of this repro then has to be shot before making plates for the printing press. Sometimes it's OK just to run negs on a Lino, but it can be twice as much as running repro, so you have to make sure that you're not going to have to re-run your pages (which often enough happens in the real world). It's also harder to proofread from the negatives, and you may not even save enough at the printers to warrant the extra cost. And if you want to use the repro to build mechanicals (manually adding other, non-electronic, elements to the page), then that's the way to go. (Some of my clients like to run film positives for their separations so that they can build overlays for the printer, something that they (and the printer) are familiar with.) The term "typesetter" can mean the person setting the type or the machine you output the type to. These days, we talk about using "imagesetter," though, as often more than type is being output. And PostScript, the page description language, is doing a lot more than typesetters (with their master code for each letter of a font) did. Since 2,540 x 2,540 (1,000 mm x 1,000 mm) of info per square inch is a heck of a lot more that 1,270 x 1,270, a page will take longer to image. I'm going to move this message thread into Section 8 (The Learning Curve) now, and will, indeed, capture it for inclusion in Library 8 (Forum Transcripts) before it scrolls off the board. BTW, what part of Indiana are you from? I lived in Terre Haute for 3-1/2 years and Indianapolis for 2-1/2 years. <BW>