Re: LaserWriter Help!

[Paul Schultz <pschultz@med.wayne.edu>]

On Sun, 14 Feb 1999, David Empson wrote:

> 
> > However, the IISC being a QuickDraw printer is very interesting.
> > The StyleWriter is a QuickDraw printer too, right?
> 
> Yeah, but so are the ImageWriter I, II, LQ, every HP DeskJet model, etc.
> 
> The term "QuickDraw printer" just means that a driver on the Mac is
> responsible for generating graphical data to send to the printer.

I was under the impression that the IISC actually could receive
the QuickDraw code from the Mac and could interpret it and render
a printed image. I don't think it is accurate to call Stylewriters,
Imagewriters, DeskJets 'QuickDraw' printers. Using this kind of
logic we could call them 'PostScript' printers since there are
software based postscript interpreters/drivers for many of these
printers (StyleScript is one package that comes to mind).

At the time the IISC was introduced, the licensing fee for Postscript
was still high enough to make postscript printers several hundreds
of dollars more expensive than their equivalent non-postscript
competitors. The advantage of the IISC was that it was cheaper
because it didn't have PostScript. It attempts to compensate for
this by using a QuickDraw interpreter to render graphics at
high resolution.

> 
> A third class is a GDI (Windows) printer, which excepts to receive
> Windows drawing calls directly from the computer.

This is analogous to how the 'QuickDraw' printers actually work.

> > As a purely theoretical question, then, the fact that a printer is a
> > QuickDraw printer does not itself prevent a driver from being written for
> > it to work with the IIGS, right?
> 

Well, we've all learned that nothing is impossible with an Apple II :-)
But, the QuickDraw these printers are expecting is the QuickDraw code
from the Mac. The IIgs uses QuickDraw II which while similar to the
QuickDraw on the Mac in concept is actually quite different and would
be incompatible if sent to a QuickDraw interpreter in one of these
printers.

Paul.

pschultz@med.wayne.edu
Paul Schultz