Re: Canon Printer Compatibility

[ddoms@gvi.net (Dennis Doms)]

In article <4tfhd4$kan@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, stevec1021@aol.com
(SteveC1021) wrote:

>I have read that you can indeed use the Canon BJC 210 with a IIGS. It has
>an Epson compatibility mode, so you would use that and the Epson driver
>under GS/OS. You would also need to get a parallel card.

>FWIW, I helped someone install one of these on his Windows machine, and it
>came with a CD-ROM. Of possible interest to a IIGS user on these are a few
>BMP graphics that could be converted for use on the GS if you have
>Convert3200, and also a folder with many true type fonts. The problem with
>the fonts is that they are, of course, in Windows format, which is not
>what Pointless uses. However, if you have access to a Mac as well, the
>fonts can be converted by a program called TTConverter 1.5 into Mac format
>TrueType fonts, which can be used on a IIGS with Pointless.
>Steve Cavanaugh
>publisher of The Apple Blossom
>http://members.aol.com/newblossom/

One thing to watch for that I ran into with a Canon BJC-600...

Although it works great printing as a graphics printer, they
apparently can't count lines in text (character) mode. The printer
won't deliver 66 lines per page emulating an Epson LQ printing ASCII
text, which goofs up any preformatting based on a calculated page
length in lines. (This is a _major_ headache on a PC using DOS as well
as character-based Apple II programs.)

I wrote Canon immediately after finding this out with samples
demonstrating the printer did not deliver the number of lines it
should in either page length mode. Canon never responded; perhaps
another consideration.

The printer has been wonderful for printing graphics-based documents
(GS/OS with Harmonie, Windows, or Mac with PowerPrint). I have not
found a GS/OS driver that supports _color_, though (Harmonie only
supports the Epson LQ in B&W, though I admittedly have an older
version and maybe this has been fixed in an upgrade). Note that if you
plan to also use this printer with Windows or Mac systems (one reason
I wanted it was to spare buying _several_ printers) that 8 megabytes
may be a realistic lower limit for system memory to print color
documents, and 16M is better.