#ProWrite and DeskJet 500
33 messages in this thread
I asked that question once upon a time and didn't get a satisfactory
answer. I was was told (by the ProWrite folks here) that I should use the
bit-mapped fonts supplied by Pro Write instead. My conclusion is that if
you have a DJ500, the best way to get good output using the built-in
proportional fonts with Pro Write is to use the ProWrite manual as a
paperweight while typing text into Word Perfect or printing from Word
Perfect. Or, if your desk is uneven, use Pro Write to prop up the low
corner … etc. Using bitmapped fonts in a 300 dpi printer is a cruel,
tasteless joke, at our expense. If I sound disappointed and bitter, it's
only because I am. I didn't spend half a grand on the DJ500 to get jaggy
output, and another couple of hundred on ProWrite to get a word processor
that can't talk eye-to-eye with one of the better printers available.
— Mike
Mike
Thanks for the reply. I share your feelings. The DeskJet 500 is a great
prinr.
When I bought Prowrite I told the salesman that I had a DJ500 and I wanted
a wordprocessor that would take advantage of the 5000s' capablities. He
told me that ProWrite was the best wordprocessor for the Amiga, and
supported the DJ500 with a printer driver. He was wrong. I would take
ProWrite back except,in many ways it is the best wordprocessor for the
Amiga. I like the program! I am dissappointed by its printer output.
Prowrite should be able to do much better.
Another problem is with page breaks. I use 1 1/2 line spacing and ProWrite
never puts the page breaks in the right place. Often I will print a page
doc that will print out on 3 pages, with the middle page having only one
line on it.
Judy
Judith,
I feel the same way about ProWrite. It was the first program I bought for
my Amiga 1000 way back in '86. Even, now in 1991, the printing still
sucks. You would think that a Word Processor would make printing its
number one priority. Hopefully I'll be able to finally send off a letter to
someone in a font other than the built-in printer font without looking like
a joke.
I shelled out money for THEIR bitmap fonts. What a joke that was.
At least they continually improve it.
>>DonovaN
Judy,
Check page 177 of the ProWrite manual on getting better output. This
discusses the option of using Print Reduction in conjunction with a double
sized font. The effects are impressive.
I hope this helps. If you have any questions, please ask.
Mark
New Horizons Software, Inc.
Mike,
What you don't understand is that ProWrite must use the official Amiga
standard for accessing printers. There is a standard interface to printers
through the printer drivers. We must use the printer driver interface to
talk to printers. If there was an Amiga bitmap font for each builtin
proportional font and if the printer driver supported builtin fonts other
than the NLQ or Draft then it certainly would be possible to use the
builtin prop fonts. However, there seems to be no Amiga bitmap equivalent
to these builtin fonts and to my knowledge, the current DJ printer driver
doesn't support multiple builtin fonts.
I do understand your frustration.
Mark
New Horizons Software, Inc.
The problem seems to be that ProWrite is capable of dealing with text as
text within the confines of the software, but appears to insist in sending
that text to the printer either as graphics or as plain vanilla ASCII.
Isn't there some way to have ProWrite recognize bolded, italicized, etc.
text and provide a printer selection in the print menu to select the
appropriate printer, the desired font from that printer, and have it
preprocess the ASCII to insert the appropriate control codes for the
selected printer before sending it to the printer driver (when we don't
want to use the graphic output)? This limits the selection of printers to
the number of preprocessors you are willing to write, but the selection is
already limited in effect to either dot matrix printers that can't do any
better than bitmap anyway, or Postscript compatibles.
I would be willing to have you leave it up to us to create fonts which look
on the screen like what our DJs or other printers will be printing. In
many cases adaptation of existing fonts would work fine.
Mike
Mike,
You can do bold, italicized, etc. text in Draft, NLQ, or Normal print.
I don't see where you get the ProWrite doesn't do this. As for selecting
the printer to use, you select that with the Preferences program under 1.2
and 1.3 Kickstart, and using the Printer preferences program in 2.0. If
the particular driver chosen supports mutliple internal fonts, then
ProWrite allows you to select them. We do not write the printer drivers.
That is Commodore's job, well, maybe Wolf Faust.
Mark
New Horizons Software
I was expecting to be able to set the font with the font number gadget.
Tonight for the first time I was able to print something close to what I
expected using the internal/cartridge fonts on the DJ500. What I did was
pre-set the font on the printer using the Font button, instead of trying to
set it through ProWrite, printed the file as NLQ, and it worked (sort of).
Why didn't it ever work like that before? Now I need to set up screen
fonts that will look like the output from the internal fonts on the DJ500.
Unfortunately, even if my printer driver allowed setting the font, I
apparently could only use one font per document in the NLQ mode, because
there's no way to change it through the software and no way to stop in the
middle and change it through the control panel.
Mike
Mike,
Right you are, only one builtin font per document.
Mark
New Horizons Software, Inc.
Mike:
Here's what you do:
1) Buy MIfont (our Mac PostScript font conversion package) and convert a
bunch of PostScript fonts. 2) Create a PostScript document with ProWrite
(you can use PPage fonts in the newest version, which are the kinds of
fonts you'd get with MIfont) 3) Download POST (PD PostScript Interpreter)
from CompuServe and then process your PostScript file(s) through it, to
your DeskJet.
Works like a charm.
Gary
– Mirror Image Prod. (416) 495-7469, via WHAP!
Can I use any of the fonts that came with PageStream? I already have Post
but have never used it because PS works fine with my DJ+ using the DJ
driver and the PS and CG fonts provided. Tell me more about MIFonts. Also,
how do I get ProWrite to print to a file instead of a printer, so Post can
process the output?
Mike
Mike:
Hmmm. I don't actually have ProWrite, but I've heard alot about their new
version, which supports PPage metric files. I just assumed that you could
direct your PostScript output to a file instead of your printer. If this is
not the case, then you're screwed (but I'd have to say that NH would be
crazy to disallow PostScript file saving. Hey, New Horizons people!! What
about it!?!) And yes, you could use the PRINTER fonts that work with
PageStream (MIfont will deal with both IBM and Mac printer fonts) but you'd
need corresponding Mac bitmap fonts (MIfont only deals with Mac bitmap
fonts because there is a single bitmap font standard on the Mac; on the
IBM, there's dozens). But you can find Mac bitmaps for most fonts (Adobe's
complete collection is here on CIS or we sell them on Amiga disk for PD
prices) in commercial package and on BBS's, as they are freely
distributable. If PageStream works fine to your DJ, then you might also
consider saving your ProWrite docs out as EPS files, bring them into PgS
and then print it (that's assuming ProWrite supports EPS files too!:)
Gary
– Mirror Image Prod. (416) 495-7469, via WHAP!
Gary,
Yes, it is very easy to tell ProWrite 3.2 to send the PostScript output
to a file. ProWrite does not output EPS.
Mark
New Horizons Software
NHS:
Good to hear you can save PostScript files to disk. Too bad about EPS,
though. It's only an extra couple lines of text. Why not?
Gary
– Mirror Image Prod. (416) 495-7469, via WHAP!
Gary:
So, if it's only a couple of added lines for EPS, can one just put these
lines in another file and use 'join' to make the EPS from the normal PS?
I'm a curious person today!
Mark
New Horizons Software, Inc.
Dear Curious Person:
Here is the difference between an EPS file and a straight forward
PostScript file:
The EPS File contains these lines at the top:
%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0 %%BoundingBox: x1,y1,x2,y2
where the pair of x,y coordinates describe the absolute boundaries, in
PostScript space, of whatever the rest of the PostScript describes (that
is, an imaginary box (and what in PostScript ISN'T an imaginary box!?!:)
whose dimensions exactly contain the outside boundaries of all graphics on
a single page).
A regular PostScript file will only have this line at the top:
%!PS-Adobe-2.0
and will not contain the BoundingBox comment.
Pretty straightforward.
So why doesn't ProWrite support EPS again? 🙂
Gary
– Mirror Image Prod. (416) 495-7469, via WHAP!
Gary,
I just checked the PS output of ProWrite 3.2. The top line has the
following:
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
On the seventh line is the following:
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 792
Could a person take both lines and join them at the top to look like:
%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0 %%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 792
and have that file be an EPS file?
Another question (Mr. Bayless is gone for a day or two), is an EPS file
rescricted to a single printed page in size? If so, how does a multiple
page document get translated into an EPS file?
Curious Mark
New Horizons Software, Inc.
Curious Mark:
Hmmm. I forgot to mention that an EPS file should not have a "showpage"
operator at the bottom, since it would defeat the purpose of embedding it
into another page in another program (The EPS part is supposed to print on
top of the current page).
This is how it works:
Imagine a page in PPage with graphics and text and such. Now, draw a box
around the extreme points of all the stuff on the page. It's this
collection of stuff that gets sent out to an EPS file. Using the 2 header
lines I mentioned earlier, a page-description program (like PPage) can read
the bounding box dimensions and create a (in the case of PPage) grey-filled
box, showing you where all that graphic stuff will go on your new page. You
can then scale it anyway you want, because PostScript will just render the
box of graphic stuff and scale then it to fit into the area defined by the
grey-filled box.
The original example straight out of ProWrite you mentioned would work fine
as an EPS file if you add the "EPSF-2.0" to the top line. PPage (for
example) would then recognise it as EPS and search for the bounding box
co-ordinates. The EPSF and BoundingBox statements actually have nothing to
do with PostScript (the "%" means they are comments and will be ignored by
the PS interpreter). They're simply there to enable programs like PPage to
define a scaling ratio for when they display their EPS grey boxes on
screen.
And, you could theoretically have multiple pages in an EPS file, but since
they don't have "showpage" operators, they'd all be printed on top of one
another in PPage's little grey box.
It's kind of nebulous (or at least my explanation of it is:). You could do
the same thing with two PostScript files and a word processor. It's just
handy, that's all.
Gary
– Mirror Image Prod. (416) 495-7469, via WHAP!
Gary,
I did some testing with trying to convert ProWrite output to EPS. I was
able to get ProPage to load it in as an EPS. I couldn't get Post or our
LaserWriter to print the file, however. I will do more testing.'
Thanks for you help Gary.
Mark
New Horizons Software, Inc.
I bought my ProWrite off the shelf in a sealed package. After looking
through my original materials again, I see nothing here that has to do with
Postscript. The manual suggests it is an extra-cost option. Is that
correct?
Mike
Mike:
I dunno' exactly what's going on with this ProWrite/PostScript thang. Have
to ask. (Hey Culligan Maaaaaaan!)
Dear Mr./Ms. New Horizons' Sysop:
What gives with ProWrite's new PostScript capabilities? Can it save
PostScript files to disk? What about EPS files? Enquiring minds NEED to
know!
Gary
– Mirror Image Prod. (416) 495-7469, via WHAP!
Mike,
Our new version of ProWrite, 3.2 has PostScript output builtin.
Previously you needed the ProScript module to output PostScript with
ProWrite.
Mark
New Horizons Software
Have ProWrite 3.2 upgrade notices been sent out to 3.1 owners?
David – via Whap!
David,
We sent ProWrite 3.2 to all registered owners of ProWrite and have heard
from many on the phone. Everyone should have theirs by now, or in the next
couple of days.
Mark
New Horizons Software, Inc.
I think that everyone is right. Us DJ-500 owners are right that we should
expect any good word processing program to make use of the fonts that are
built in to our printer (they look pretty good!). However, our fine vendor
here is right in that it appears the standard Amiga printer driver
interface doesn't allow the latitude required. HOWEVER: what in the h??? is
that "printer font number" selector on the print requester supposed to do?
It certainly doesn't let you pick the font. I have to believe that either
C= (God help us) or New Horizons can figure out a way to do what's right
(PA-LEEEEASE!). In the mean time, I have a partial solution: I use the
SuperDJ print driver from Creative Focus. The nice thing it does is avoid
changing the font settings you've selected via the DJ-500 front panel, so
you can set the damn thing to Times and that's what you get (if you use NLQ
or Draft – if you use Standard you get the same crummy looking bit-map
fonts). The bad news is you can't switch fonts in the middle of a document
using this method. BTW, don't try using the method that they suggest in
the ProWrite manual (print reduction, or something like that) – You have to
deal with a blown up image of the doc, which really seams to defeat the
WYSIWIG feature of ProWrite. A final alternative: Some time back I wrote a
program called DJ_FILT which I think is still on the libs here somewhere.
It is far from perfect, but what it does is let you embed some filter
commands (using the alt key) into your document, which change the font,
size, etc. on the fly. Again, you lose the WYSIWIG view of the document (it
now has all those printer commands in it…). I think I included a Rexx
script that I use sometimes with DJ_FILT and Prowrite to let you filter the
final output through DJ_FILT and on to the printer. Finally: I think it's
good that we give some (ahem!) feedback to New Horizons about ProWrite, but
lets go easy – I still think it is a damn good program, and I fully expect
it to continue to get better (IMHO).
Steve Anderson
The feedback was there months ago when, having paid a price for PW not too
dissimilar from that paid for Word Perfect, I asked about better quality
print output and got the song and dance about "print reduction," which to
me showed that they already knew about the problem and had given it enough
thought to decide not to do more about it. The print reduction solution is
no more realistic than asking your readers to stand 6 feet away while they
read it. Many people use word processors to write letters, and many of
those letters are business letters. Sending out a business letter produced
on the DJ500 which barely meets the "NLQ" standard, let alone LQ, just
doesn't cut it. Many of us DJ500 owners traded up from print quality equal
to or better than what PW provides. Laser owners likewise. Bear in mind,
too, that many of us Amiga owners believe or believed at one time that our
hardware was state of the art and deserved software that was up to the task
of making it sing. We were sold PW on the strength of recommendations that
it was the best word processor available for the Amiga. Some like me went
out and bought diskettes of PW fonts to really spiff it up. Then we found
out we might as well have Epson FX-whatevers for all the not-so-little
rectangles PW was using to assemble our print. If this is the best word
processing software available for the best personal computing hardware
available, we've not come as far since 1977 as I thought.
For my serious word processing, I'll take Word Perfect, clunky and dated as
it is, because everything does what it's supposed to do. It may not quite
be WYSIWYG, but I don't do word processing to have it look good on the
screen. When ink meets paper, ProWrite is WYGIWWG (what you get is what
we've got) while Word Perfect is at least WYGIWYW (what you get is what you
want).
I'll keep making comments and asking questions until the answers make
sense.
Mike
Steveevery time I try to run DJ_FILT my machine instantly crashes. My machine
will crash even when I use the original (Unmoified) WorkBench disk. I have
a GVP harddive/ memory card, could this be the cause of the problem?
I have at times run DJ_PRINT without my Amiga crashing. It is because of
this program that I am dissapointed with the output from ProWrite. I got a
taste of the Proprotionally spaced Times fontfrom DJ_PRINT and I LIKE IT!!!
Are there any hints or fixes available for DJ_FILT or DJ_PRINT?
Jud
Jud: I guess I had better upload the new DJ_FILT and DJ_PRINT. Several
people had their machine crash, and upon further investigation it was
because their stack was too small and I (gulp!) had failed to check for
running out of stack space. Both programs were changed to use less stack
space and also do stack checking. I haven't uploaded the new versions
'cause I had hoped to get some other ideas from folks for what they would
like to have changed. I guess either everyone had their machines crash (you
are the third that I know of) or no one wants anything different. In either
case it probably makes sense for me to upload the newer version to prevent
future problems. If you want to run the version you have just make sure to
do a 'stack 30000' (that's a guess – I can't remember exactly how big it
needs to be, but I'm sure 30K will more than do it) before you run either
DJ_FILT or DJ_PRINT. One idea I had was to combine the two programs into
one and have DJ_PRINT do the DJ_FILT stuff if some command line switch was
set. I dunno…. Anyway, try the bigger stack. I do think that DJ_PRINT is
a good way to at least be able to make use of your DJ-500's built in fonts.
Steve
Thanks Steve,
I'll try a larger stack size.
Judy
Steve,
With ProWrite 3.2 you can completely eliminate the need for using the
print reduction process described in the manual. You can simply choose the
High quality print option on the new print requester. However, with 1.2
and 1.3 Kickstart, you must have a double sized point size of the font that
you are trying to print. In the 2.04 Kickstart system, ProWrite simply
asks the system to provide the correct size font based on the printer's
resolution.
Mark
New Horizons Software
When should we expect Prowrite 3.2?
Pat
– via Whap!
Pat,
If you ordered the upgrade to ProWrite, you can expect it in 4 to 6 weeks,
as stated on the order form, which you probably sent in and can't look at
now.
Mark
New Horizons Software, Inc.