Bitstream

[PAUL MILLIKIN]

 Bob, thanks largely to you, I am not only conversant with soft fonts
 now, but you just saved me a bundle of green. I was sorely tempted to
 plank down for the new HP LJ IIIP, even though it hasn't stood the
 test of time yet. In my ignorance, its many internal fonts and
 especially its scalable fonts sounded really juicy. Somehow I got the
 idea that "scalable" meant there was some sort of internal magic that
 would allow the printer itself to create new fonts of any size up to
 1000 points, and do it on the fly.
   Then reality set in, as I realized that with XyWrite, each new
 font of whatever size would require that a font definition, a PT
 table, and a width table would have to be added to the printer file.
 That's exactly what I've been doing with Bitstream and Lodestar, and
 it works just fine on the LJII. Ergo, I'll keep my money.
   Maybe the new XyW4 or Xygnature or whatever will change all that,
 if it ever gets released. However, I believe I'll just wait and see.
   On the XyQuest Exchange BB, Andrew Glass uploaded a XyW printer
 file for me, designed for the LJIII. Named "Laser.prn," it has the
 usual internal fonts plus 9 fonts each in CGTimes and Univers, ranging
 from 10 to 120 points. It's very well organized, but it's also a very
 big file.
   I'm also much impressed with Lodestar. I use the LJII at the
 local med school here, but they use Microsoft Word. Therefore I have
 XyW and ancillary material, including fonts and Lodestar's DL.exe on a
 single floppy. I just boot that up, download my BitStream fonts and
 awaaaaay we go!
   Thanks again for all your help. I owe you a BIG one!
 Regards,