Re: Printers

[nsivin@xxxxxxxx (Nathan Sivin)]

Jim Besser:

I have just changed from 3 generations of Deskjets to a Laserjet 4+. The
Deskjet is a first-rate printer, much easier to set up than the laser. One of
its strengths, which I took for granted, is that you can get typographer's
quotation marks with any proportional typeface by typing a pair of single
quotes and then a pair of apostrophes. I no longer take it for granted, since
there is no simple way to get TQM on a Laserjet with any font except those
built into XYDOS. To get them at all with Garamond I had to spend $70 on the
H-P PCL documentation, and then to bother the XY Tech Support people for a
custom solution (which appeared today).

With the Deskjet you don't have to worry about that. The quality is just a bit
better than that of unenhanced 300 dpi lasers, barely inferior to that of the
Laserjet III. It looks better in another sense because you have an ink image
rather than a nice photocopier image. You can also speed things up a bit by
editing the XYDOS printer file to get rid of cartridges and soft fonts you
don't use.

By the way, if anyone wants to buy my old Deskjet 500 + cartridges and
customized XYDOS driver, contact me privately (nsivin@xxxxxxxx).

-- Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-3325