🚀 go-pugleaf

(Following a discussion on direct-imaging vs. Postscript and
Hewlett-Packard-style printers. This message, and followups, are
crossposted to comp.text.desktop.)

In article <89Dec1.201000est.57415@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca>,
     MEGGIN@vm.epas.utoronto.ca (David Megginson) writes ... 

>My spouse uses our ST to layout a section of a large-circulation
>Canadian magazine. We use Calamus and a Lino imagesetter for the final
>flats, but for proofs, we use the SLM804. 5 minutes for a page? What a
>joke! Who the hell uses a laser printer and only prints out single pages?
>We can print out a hundred pages in well under a half hour on the SLM804,
>that would take more than an entire business day at 5 min/page.

Dave, yours is the first message I've seen from anyone using Calamus with
a real typesetter. I'd like to know a lot more about it, including:

* What Linotype model? Price?

* Precisely how is the interface configured? I've heard that the ICD (or
  Ditek) folks have rigged some way to bypass the Linotype RIP processor
  and just blast bits from the Mega ST to the typesetter's laser. True?

* What memory requirements does this impose? If you're running greater
  than 1200 dpi density on the output device, doesn't that suck RAM in the
  Mega ST?

* How fast is it?

* How big a page can you manage? A Mega/Linotype setup that could blast
  out tabloid newspaper pages could be a formidable setup.

* Doesn't the Lino gag at the thought of Compugraphic fonts? (Just
  kidding.)

* Is anybody OEMing this sort of package?

* Is there a Linotype plain-paper high-resolution printer that will run on
  such a setup? (One of the big selling points of laser xerographic
  typesetting has been that it can cut the production costs of the average
  U.S. weekly newspaper by $20,000 a year by avoiding silver-based
  phototypesetting paper, according to an informal survey taken by
  the American Newspaper Publishers Association.)

   -- Steve Yelvington, up at the lake in Minnesota        
  ... pwcs.StPaul.GOV!stag!thelake!steve             (UUCP)