RE: HP Printers

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

I have been in conversation (e-mail and telephone; it needed a call from
a tech in the "Advanced Support Group") with HP about the odd
discrepancies between the 855C and the 5650 (both DeskJets), and this is
what they tell me:

The earlier DeskJets, though listed as using PCL3, were "more flexible,"
but that led to "problems," and they have made the 5650 adhere more
closely to the PCL3 spec.

>From what my tests have revealed, I would say that MEANS that the 855C
and its like were really using PCL5, or at least some of its features
(after all, I use the LJ 3 and 4 drivers with that printer and get most
of the features), but then they decided, "Hey, everybody's using a GUI of
some sort, so why should we waste money putting all that programming into
our printers." And so they cut back to simon-pure PCL3 for the 5650.

That still doesn't seem to make much sense of the odd shifting of letters
in some fonts, but I gather (from the PCL5 TechReference books that Jerry
lent me) that the choice of symbol sets is more important than the choice
of fonts: the printer tries to find a font that's reasonably like the one
you spec'd, but has the symbol set you spec'd. So SY takes priority over
UF.

By the bye, a guy at NYPC was calling the merged company Hewlett
ComPackard.

Patricia