From: fgd3@nifty.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe, III)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.apps
Subject: Re: <None>
Date: 4 Jan 93 02:11:11 EST
Distribution: world
Organization: Fabbian G. Dufoe, III

In article <1993Jan2.211349.46051@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> altevogt@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <fgd3.03d9@nifty.UUCP>, fgd3@nifty.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe, III) writes:
>>    I haven't encountered any problems with the driver for the HP DeskJet
>> PLUS.
>> 
>   YOu're just not trying.  I have an HP Deskjet Plus with a
>Times Roman R cartridge (allegedly supported by Microsoft) and it
>fails to properly justify text using this cartridge when I bold any
>portion of the text in a line under any app using the Winodws printer
>driver.  No, our friend from Washington is EXACTLY correct when he

   Ah, there's the problem.  I'm not using any font cartridges.  I just let
the applications send a bitmap to the printer.  That approach works equally
well for the Epson LX800, which produces fine output using TrueType fonts.

   When I first bought my DeskJet PLUS I borrowed a Times Roman cartridge
from a friend.  I had almost the same problems you described trying to print
from an Amiga 1000 running WordPerfect.  The problem seemed to be that the
application had a different idea about the width of the characters in the
Times Roman font than did the printer.

   In fact, I have yet to find a single WordPerfect printer driver that can
print correctly the "PRINTER.TST" document which WordPerfect supplies.  I
know it can be done, as I've written WordPerfect printer drivers for four
printers.  I couldn't get the Times Roman font cartridge working correctly,
though, because Hewlett Packard didn't provide documentation for the
character widths with the cartridge.

>talks about Microsoft's inferior printer drivers.  Not only are they
>of poor quality, but compared to the ones that come with Word Perfect,
>they are EXTREMELY limited in the printers that they support.  As
>someone else mentioned, Microsoft simply doesn't seem to care about
>customer support, and its company philosophy seems to be one of (an
>undeserved) arrogance.  And no, this problem has existed for too long
>for there to be any possibility that Microsoft listens.

   That hasn't been my experience.  When I reported a problem with the
"Generic / Text Only" printer driver in Windows 3.1 I got a quick reply back
from someone at Microsoft.  I had the feeling they were quite interested in
trying to resolve the problem.

   I sent instructions on how to reproduce the problem and some test output
which demonstrated what I thought were errors in the printer driver.  Having
worked on the other side of the fence, I know it is almost impossible to fix
a software bug if you can't reproduce it.  Most users have a very poor idea
of what's going wrong when they experience a bug.  As a result, they tend to
report irrelevant details and omit important ones.  Just because Microsoft
doesn't fix every problem you complain about doesn't mean they don't care
about it.  They may be unable to find the cause.

   By contrast, my experience with WordPerfect has been less than
satisfactory.  WordPerfect has a reputation for providing exemplary customer
support.  Yet, when I reported several easily reproducible bugs in their
Amiga product they took no discernable action.  That may have been due to
their decision to abandon the Amiga market.  On the other hand, the poor
revenues which drove their decision to leave the Amiga market may have been
a result of the poor quality of their product for that platform.  (Their
MS-DOS products, by contrast, seem to be quite good.)

   No software company has a perfect customer support record.  All of them
I've dealt with try to produce reliable products and correct problems.

--Fabbian G. Dufoe, III
   350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South   | GEnie:    F.DUFOE3
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