From: mikeh@starnine.com (Mike Haas)
Subject: Re: The Mac is not ideal (was Re: Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 04:31:34 GMT
Organization: StarNine Technologies, Inc.

In article <C0F6rC.Ap0@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>In article <C0EvKw.H42@starnine.com> mikeh@starnine.com (Mike Haas) writes:
>>>It isn't the GUI that makes the Mac look better to 
>>>me as a developer for both Mac and Amiga.  The Mac
>>>is infinetly better at producing paper as one need
>>>only open a printer port that acts just like  a 
>>>window port.  One uses the same drawing instructions
>>>and the result goes correctly to your printer.  The
>>
>>It's about the same on the Amiga.  You use the normal
>>graphic routines to draw into a rastport, then blast the
>>finished thing to the printer with one printer-independant
>>system call to the printer device.
>>
>>Have you ever programmed the Amiga?
>>
>>>application does not have to have its own printer
>>>driver!!
>>
>>Applications on the Amiga do not need their own printer
>>drivers, either.  Some come with standard system drivers
>>but I've never bought an Amiga app that required a special
>>printer driver (including paint & word processing
>>programs).
>
>   Every program that I have that is oriented toward getting good printed
>output includes its own printer drivers.  This includes PageStream, ProPage,
>and WordPerfect.  If the Amiga printer drivers are adequate, why does every
>developer of a graphical word processor or DTP program always include a 
>replacement for the Amiga's printer drivers?

Because the Amiga's printing system is flexible, and the can optimize
things as they see fit.

The Amiga is designed for printing to a wider range of printers than
the Mac.  ImageWriters & LaserWriters.  Wow.

>
>   You said that the Amiga and Mac printing systems were pretty much the same.
>They aren't.  The big difference is that Mac applications route graphics
>through QuickDraw, which provides structured graphics, and send font names to
>the printer drives instead of the actual fonts. 

Really?  Is that how Imagewriters work?

You don't really understand how PostScript printers work, do you.  The only
time you can just send a font name to a printer is when that printer
contains that font.  To print in a font that
is not resident on the printer, some font definition still needs to be
downloaded to the printer.

Macs do it too.  It's not a function of Macintosh at all... it's how
Postscript printers work.  Same when dealing with Postscript on the Amiga.


>
>   On the Amiga, the printer drivers are fairly 'dumb'.  They include only
>the barest of facilities for translating the output for a specific printer.

The capabilites of an Amiga printer driver are determined by the printer.

>When an Amiga application send graphical data to the printer drivers, it
>is send in the form of bitmapped graphics.  No structured graphic capabilities
>are provided in the Amiga's print system.

No, that can be provided at the application level.

>When an Amiga application sends
>a font to the printer drivers, the font is sent just like another piece of
>bitmapped data.  So that if you have a document with CompuGraphic structured
>fonts, the fonts get sent as bitmaps, resulting in jaggie-hell on most
>printers.

The Amiga cn produced hi-resolution smooth
postcript-printed documents just as the Mac can.  Witness the ads
that appear in Amiga magazines for desktop publishing systems
that were produced by those products on the Amiga.  They are
indistinguishable from ads produced by professional agencies.

The final output is determined by more by the printer technology,
than by the print system.  Hook an Imagewriter to your mac, then
tell me how there are no jaggies!

My OKIMATE 20 will never produce anything but jaggy graphics.
With a postscript printer and an application that supports postscript,
it's SMOOTH sailing.


>
>   BTW, this is why so many Amiga applications replace the Amiga's printer
>drivers completely.  They are built to work with bitmaps and only bitmaps,
>and have no facilities for working with structured graphics or structured
>fonts, so that getting really good output with the Amiga's printer drivers is
>just about impossible.

But "really good output" is possible in other ways.  That's the big difference
between the Mac & the Amiga... the Amiga can be made to do what the Mac can
do (right down to being a mac itself).

The mac stuggles to do what it does as a mac.  Forget getting it to
do things Amigas do with ease.

The mac has a well-integrated print & font system.  But it provides
nothing that is impossible on other machines.  And to have to put up
with the rest of that machine... it's just not worth it.

The majority of the reason the mac can have "really good output" is not
because of anything the mac does.  It is due to the Postscript
technology of the devices that hook to it.

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