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Freedom of Press Light, version 3.01, a $55 postscript
  interpreter (MacWareHouse).  (Mac/PC) Custom Applications, Inc,
  Billerica, MA 508-667-8585

This is a review of the Freedom of Press (FOP) Postscript Interpreter
for use with an HP deskwriter (2.1 driver) and ATM 1.01 on the
Macintosh.

OTHER REVIEWS.  Gregory Wasson wrote a quick-clicks review of the FOP
interpreter in the Feb 91 issue of MacUser (4 mice).  There was a long
review of FOP 2.1 in the Jan 1990 issue of MacUser, including samples
of the output.  FOP was an editor's choice program last year, in the
May 90 issue of MacUser.  I have to say that Wasson's review was a
piece of garbage.  Here's why:

  1.  Wasson raved about how Ultrascript requires you to run
  a utility to convert your ATM fonts into special files in order to
  "install" them in the printer.  This takes up space on your hard disk
  - for each font, there is an ATM version, and an Ultrascript version.
  FOP does not require this; it accepts fonts downloaded from the
  laserwriter driver.  The reviewer claimed this was a "major disadvantage"
  of Ultrascript.

  There is something major about this -- it shows the reviewer is a
  major moron.  With FOP you get TWO performance hits, and ONE disk
  space hit every time you print a file with ATM-downloaded fonts in
  them.  First, there is PERFORMANCE HIT#1 when the laserwriter driver
  copies the font download data from ATM files into your "Postscript0"
  file on the hard disk.  As you will hear later, the fonts with FOP are
  inferior; you will want to use downloaded ATM fonts 100% of the time,
  if you have them.  Second, DISK HIT#1 occurs because each
  "Postscript0" file you produce contains all these downloaded fonts; a
  1-page file with 12 fonts required 700K of disk space -- you could not
  afford to keep several such files on your hard disk (the same file
  without downloaded fonts required 5K of disk space).  Third, there is
  PERFORMANCE HIT#2 when FOP reads and interprets the fonts in the
  "Postscript0" file, (Ultrascript gets pre-interpreted "installed"
  fonts straight from disk).

  With FOP, you always have (1) All ATM font files, and (2) downloaded fonts
  in the Postscript0 file(s).  If you want to save 3 Postscript0 files
  on disk in order to upload to a remote laser printer, or to send to a
  remote service bureau, or for archive, you almost certainly would be
  using much more disk space with FOP.  With Ultrascript, you could
  conceivably convert all your ATM fonts to Ultrascript format, remove
  or compress the ATM files, and use only the apple screen fonts.
  This would always use less disk space than FOP, but it would be a
  hassle to reactivate ATM (i.e. for use with HP's printer driver).
  
  FOP is advertised to "work with" ATM.  This means that it accepts type-1
  fonts if downloaded.  It DOES NOT use ATM to render fonts; it DOES NOT
  derive any speed or hinting benefits from the algorithms in ATM 2.0.
  FOP renders ATM fonts on its own.
  
  2.  The reviewer didn't say anything about the quality of the output.
  Basically, FOP costs $50 because the fonts are not desirable.  If you
  read the font binary files, they are no-name products that, quite
  simply, look bad (there is almost no kerning, which destroys the spacing
  in your document; and many characters are downright ugly).  To compound
  this, there is no easy way to override the four basic FOP fonts.  FOP
  will not start unless these fonts are stored on your disk.  I patched
  the laserwriter driver to make it download ATM fonts.  This slows down
  FOP *even* *more*.
  
  I've seen Ultrascript fonts on our QMS/Imagen printers; they look much
  better to the naked eye, especially the Symbol and New Century
  Schoolbook fonts -- some Ultrascript  fonts look even better than the
  Adobe Symbol and Adobe New Century Schoolbook fonts.

  You say you don't like the FOP fonts and want to remove them from
  your disk?  Sorry, this cannot be done with FOP light.

  3.  The MacUser reviewer mentioned that printing was a 1-step
  process in both Ultrascript and in FOP.  Wrong wrong wrong.
  If your deskwriter must be connected to your printer port then it is
  a 6-step process!!! AAAARRRGH!!!!  I need my modem port for my
  telecom software (RR9.4) which doesn't work with the printer port.
  So my "1-step printing" is actually "6-step printing":
        1.  Turn the deskwriter off or unplug it because the chooser
	    laserwriter dialogue will write junk onto the appletalk port
            which is printed on my deskwriter and wastes gobs of ink.
	2.  Choose Laserwriter in chooser
	3.  Print file in application
	4.  Turn on Deskwriter
	5.  Unchoose laserwriter in chooser {so FOP can initialize}
	6.  Go to FOP and make the file print.

  Custom Applications, inc.  knows about the problem and is *NOT*
  working on a solution (it says in the manual that deskwriter users
  must use the other port).  Has anyone experienced this problem with
  Ultrascript?  Ultrascript includes an init, which may (presumably)
  patch the appletalk driver at boot time, bypassing the problem.

  On the other hand, suppose you *could* hook your printer to the modem
  port, to get "1-step" printing.  Often I keep a remote terminal
  session on my modem 100% of the time.  While printing, I would probably
  want to read usenet Notesfiles.  But in step 2 above when you activate
  the laserwriter driver, it writes junk onto the modem port, which could
  conceivably ruin your remote session!  The interface between
  Laserwriter <-> FOP spooler is poor and needs some major redesign.

------------------------- REVIEW FOLLOWS --------------------------

SETUP (5 stars).  There is an installer that puts everything you need
on your disk.  The program must be in the blessed System Folder or it
will not run.  Laserwriter 6.0.1 driver is included.

OUTPUT QUALITY (2.5 stars, would be higher but for fonts)
  (1) Line drawings printed well but hairlines seemed to be drawn
	with quickdraw, resulting in some flakiness (diagonal lines
	that varied in width from 2-3 pixels look bad; they look better
	on our QMS/Imagen Ultrascript 3320 printer (300dpi)).  Line
	widths are incorrectly computed; half point vertical lines are
	drawn 3 pixels wide at 300dpi, but 2 pixels wide by HP's
	deskwriter driver; this is clearly an error in FOP light.
  (2) Characters rotated well and printed well
  (3) A  64-color mathematica plot, exported to canvas, was dithered and
	printed perfectly by FOP.
  (4) The symbol font looks bad bad bad.  Symbol has the worst sigma I
	have ever seen.  The times font looks almost as bad as the new
	TrueType New York font.  It only takes 5 seconds to spot the bad
	kerning in samples in the Jan 90 MacUser review!  
  (5) An overstrike of a vertical bar (subscript 5 pts) and a vertical
	left-ceiling character (superscript 5 points) in MS-Word,
	printed misaligned (by 1 three hundred dpi dot).  This should produce
	a "big" vertical ceiling character.  It printed correctly with the HP
	quickdraw deskwriter driver, on an Apple Laserwriter, and on an
	QMS/Imagen Ultrascript printer.  It happened with both the FOP fonts
	and the ATM fonts.  I concluded it was a rounding bug in the
	mathematics of FOP.

ROBUSTNESS (4.5 stars).  I would say the interpreter (version 3.01) is
relatively bug-free.  I have experienced no crashes and no serious
errors in the printed output.  The interpreter will not print mathematica
postscript; the manual says "this is a mathematica problem".  This is
probably false; mathematica output prints correctly on other postscript
printers, including the Apple Laserwriter and QMS/Imagen 3320 + Ultrascript.

SPEED (2 mice).  The interpreter is remarkably slow.  On a Mac II
running System 7.0 using the 68881 version of the interpreter, a page
takes about 4:30 to print.  This does not include the time to screw
with the chooser and to generate the "PostScript0" file in the
application; expect to average about 5:00 per page for short jobs.
When printing 2 copies of the same page, it took a long time to print
the second copy, about twice as long as the deskwriter 2.1 driver.
When given 3 Mb of RAM, the interpreter did not increase in speed.  I
pity anyone with a Mac Plus or less memory.  Printing of greyscales is
further hindered by the humongous files generated by the 6.x
postscript driver (i.e. half a page of greyscale leads to a 4Mb
"PostScript0" file).

VERSATILITY (2.5 mice). 
 +  The interpreter allows you to preview at 72dpi,
 -  It does not allow preview at the resolution of your printer (i.e. 300dpi)
 -  It does not allow you to store the bitmap result of a preview.  
 -  It does not allow you to convert a postscript picture to a
    PICT even though it would probably not be hard to add this capability
    to the software.  
 -  It does not allow you to type commands interactively into the postscript
    interpreter, hence, it is useless for interactive postscript debugging. 
 -  It does not allow you to select a particular page of a job, to print.
 -  It does not allow you to install fonts in the interpeter.  This is
    a BIG problem if you have a postscript file without fonts, but
    you own the necessary type-1 fonts.  You can't get FOP to use these
    fonts, since FOP can only load fonts from a postscript file.
 +  FOP can drive a deskwriter by itself, or drive it as a quickdraw
    device through HP's driver.  So you can get 150dpi faster mode printing.
 +  The interpreter will print several files in a "batch"
 +  Custom Laser prep (.ppd) files are included for Adobe Illustrator /
    Separator, Aldus Pagemaker, Letraset Design Studio, Quark XPress, and
    ReadySetGo.
 +  The software directly supports about 50 printers, among them:
      All epson dot-matrix (for some you must buy a serial interface)
	Epson EPL-6000 Laser
      HP Deskjet, Deskjet+, Deskwriter, PaintJet, PaintJet XL,
	PaintWriter, Laser Jet II, IIP, IID, -2000, III.
      Apple Imagewriter II, Laserwriter IISC
      Toshiba 351SX
      IBM Pro Printer X24, Quickwriter, 4019 LaserPrinter
      Panasonic KX series
      Canon BJ-130, BJ-130e, LBP series

     Almost any printer that has a bug-free quickdraw printer driver.
     FOP renders the postscript as a bitmap and prints through the driver.

 +  It is easy to modify the postscript prologue files provided with
    FOP (of course, the crummy manual doesn't say a word about what these
    files are or when they are loaded or what they do)

    The interpreter successfully ran the "multips" postscript prologue;
    this prologue causes the postscript program to print several logical
    pages on 1 physical page, saving paper.  "multips" ran with a simple
    postscript sample.  However, I have never found a prologue that will
    work with the mac laserprep, even on Imagen/Ultrascript, and this was
    no exception.

 +  There is a way for ATM owners to make FOP use the ATM fonts.
    Open the laserwriter driver with ResEdit.  Open the resource "insc",
    ID = 0.  Look for the words "Times" "Symbol" "Courier" and replace them
    with "zTimes" "zSymbol" "zCourier".  Open the Times, Courier, and
    Symbol ATM files.  Make sure they have type "LWRC" (sometimes, ATM
    users change the type to "xWRC" so that ATM never downloads any fonts).
    Now, when you print, the laserwriter driver will download the ATM
    fonts, they will supercede the FOP fonts in the postscript interpreter).

    According to Custom Applications, there is a 2nd way for ATM 
    owners to make FOP use the ATM fonts.  Edit the "Spooler
    Configuration" file and delete all but the first and last lines of
    this file.  This will cause FOP to use the Adobe Type 1 fonts
    however, terrible things might happen if the interpreter tries
    to substitute courier for an unknown font later.

DOCUMENTATION (1.5 mice).  The 80-page manual is functional but poor.
The chapters are (1) floppy installation, (2) configuring FOP (3)
configuring your printer (4) printing a file (5) known bugs.  Only
about 25-30 pages of the manual are useful information, because so
much of the manual describes the use of FOP with other types of
printers.  Information about your printer is scattered throughout the
manual, and on disk in the FOP application help dialogue and the FOP
release notes (TeachText).

The manual does not tell you anything technical or useful about the
postscript engine itself or its capabilities or limitations or speed.
It does not tell you anything about the fonts, or how to change /
substitute fonts.  It does not tell you what is going on when there is
a bug.  The manual is aimed at the illiterate technophobe.  To their
credit, there is a (non-800) technical support phone number and a
checklist to follow before you call for help.

CONCLUSION (3.5 mice). 
 * Why use HP's Deskwriter Driver?  In most cases, the Deskwriter
driver, with ATM or with the included high-quality CS/ITC fonts,
produces equivalent line drawings and better looking fonts than FOP
and it's 5 times faster.  

 * Why buy FOP?  FOP makes an ok 72dpi postscript previewer.  It is
great for people who have no other means of viewing a postscript file
they have acquired.  It is useful for printing halftones of Color
Quickdraw Pictures at 300dpi.  FOP can print color on dot-matrix
printers that support color.

 * Why buy a postscript interpreter?  Old drawings that have been
aligned to print correctly on a postscript device may require a
postscript interpreter (this was a problem of mine).  This is because
there are serious flaws in the QuickDraw architecture, that occur if
you draw aligned graphics (Rectangle, RoundRect, Oval, Arc, and
Region), export them to another word processor, and expect to print
them aligned, when scaled to 300dpi.  Your options are to rely
exclusively on Polygons & Lines for aligned graphics, or to use
a postscript printer.  3-dimensional plots (mathematica) can only be
printed well with a postscript driver.

Some applications (Adobe Illustrator) insist on printing at 72dpi.
Postscript can get higher resolution output from these applications.
Some applications will not print at all with the Deskwriter.  These
applications (according to HP deskwriter documentation, 2/90) are:

will not print  FullPaint, MacPaint v1.5**, Red Ryder v10.3**, 
at all:		Microphone II v2.0**

will print only	Hypercard, all versions, Illustrator 88, all versions,
at 72dpi:	Digital Darkroom v1.0**, Image Studio v1.5, Cricket Draw,
		Canvas 2.1.

	** = These versions are obsolete, and all earlier versions suffer
	     the same problems.

 * Why avoid FOP?  Because of the low quality of the outline fonts,
FOP alone is unsuitable for producing camera-ready documents.  FOP's 4
basic fonts are inferior and to overcome this drawback, you must (1)
purchase ATM, and (2) hack the laserwriter driver with ResEdit to
download ATM fonts [see "VERSATILITY" above], and (3) suffer even
longer printing times.  FOP does not render lines as uniformly or as
correctly as Adobe's Postscript or QMS/Imagen's Ultrascript software
on "real" laser printers.  FOP with FOP's plus pack fonts costs $55 +
$98 = $153.  You may be happier spending $110 + $110 = $220 on
Ultrascript light + ATM plus pack fonts (you don't need ATM itself).
The potential benefits may be better fonts, faster printing, and fewer
bugs: Can anyone confirm this?

Disclaimer:  I have not used ultrascript/mac, I only have experience
with ultrascript/4.1 and ultrascript/5.0 that runs on imagen printers.

What have I learned?  It is important to check the source of the
outline fonts when buying ANY postscript interpreter or printer driver.

Don Gillies	     |  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
gillies@cs.uiuc.edu  |  Digital Computer Lab, 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana IL

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