Re: Need advice re a new laser printer

["Fredric Gross" fredric.gross@xxxxxxxx]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Holmgren" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 9:34 PM
Subject: Re: Need advice re a new laser printer


> ** Reply to message from "Fredric Gross"  on
Tue, 13
> Apr 2004 14:55:46 -0400
>
>
> > It may well be that the printer manufacturers are
> > modifying the H-P version, or that H-P is tweeking the version given to
> > other manufacturers.
>
> That doesn't make complete sense.

I agree that it is stunningly strange, but I've seen it (repeatedly) with
mine own eyes. Happily, my staff does Word and WordPerfect, and so the
printers are being used.

> The language itself is published, open. All
> the commands are known (if they weren't, nobody could write a printer
driver
> for them). HP didn't write the XyWrite PRNs -- XyQuest wrote them. So
the
> problem, if there is one, must lie with the PagePro's implementation
> (translation from code to paper) of the language's commands -- they can't
just
> go steal HP's firmware (although maybe they license it). Unless, of
course,
> you are right that recent PCL versions are not downwardly compatible...
But
> Paul Breeze bought a new HP 1000W last fall, and it worked fine, using a
> software emulation of PCL 5; Paul said that the HP 1005, 1150 and 1300
printers
> also use that software.
>
> I'm just surprised that I never heard of this before.

I seem to recall some prior postings, including one of mine.

>How did you learn that
> "PCL emulation was too high"?

 I learned by trial and error. Every time I changed my font, my margins
moved on a Brother HL 5040 and on Minolta PagePro and QMS printers.
Printing the exact same files from the exact same computer to my HL 1440,
the margin shifting did not happen. Also no problem with my old NEC 860 and
660 laser printers, but they are no longer available. Since the only
variable appears to be the [rinter (or its PCL version), the obvious
inference was that somebody eliminated a variable from backwards compat.


> The uneasy thing is, that there are so many
> reasons why printers "don't work", e.g. bottlenecks in the spooler, that
aren't
> related to PCL but are difficult to diagnose.

That may be, but I am not competent to address it.

Fred
>
> -----------------------------
> Robert Holmgren
> holmgren@xxxxxxxx
> -----------------------------
>