On 2017-01-13 5:19 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
On Jan 13, 2017, at 2:02 PM, Toby Thain <t...@telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
On 2017-01-13 3:17 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
On Jan 13, 2017, at 1:05 PM, Toby Thain <t...@telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
...
AUD $25,000 for a Linotype L100 PostScript imagesetter (used).
Has a 68K computer inside it with Adobe ROMs. Communication via serial or
AppleTalk.
One of the first high resolution PostScript imagesetters. Put a lot of feet of
bromide paper through it.
Neat! By the standards of the time, those were not really high image
quality, but definitely adequate and successful for newspaper work. I
remember working with them in the early 1980s.
Yes, its primary job was newspaper galley setting when I bought it, but I did
bureau work on the side. Even some negatives of questionable density ;)
The quality issue I remembered was somewhat jaggy outlines, even
though the scan resolution was entirely adequate. It was the first
outline based typesetter I've seen, and you could tell from the film --
Now I think about it, I've definitely seen what you are talking about,
although not with this device. Indeed, early outline set fonts were
insufficiently high resolution. Either they misjudged it or perhaps it
was due to a memory/storage constraint. Maybe this was a Linotron
problem, but I'm not familiar with that generation. (IIRC Linotype sold
the laser/raster engine with its own pre-PostScript software, a
generation after CRT setters? Or these poor rasterisations might have
been in the CRT generation.)
This isn't an issue with any of the PostScript setters though
(specifically not the Linotronics); the PostScript rasterisation is good
quality. You would never be able to discern flatness issues in the text.
--Toby
but not from newsprint -- that the outline shapes weren't quite fine
enough. It's possible I'm remembering wrong and that was the Linotron
300 that had this issue. Perhaps so, the dates for PostScript don't
quite fit the dates when I was doing this stuff.
paul
