🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8397@ihlpf.ATT.COM>, cem@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Malloy) writes:
> 
> [lots of things deleted]
> 
> > After 90 minutes, we pulled camera-ready pages out of our
> > LaserWriter, and walked them over to the print center. 
> 
> Camera-ready pages?  From a 300x300 D.P.I printer?  Get real.  No
> real printer in this country considers a 300x300 D.P.I Laser Printer
> camera-ready.  It's good enough for in-house repro junk, but a Printer
> will not except anything less than 600x600 D.P.I. to produce decent
> quality.

300 x 300 dpi is quite adequate for printing if you use 12 point
type and larger, particularly in the highly legible type
famlies. For example, New Century Schoolbook or Bookman with Avant
Garde  or Helvetica in normal postscript output. Alternately,
Lucida, Lucida Sans, Charter, and the Stone famlies can be used in
even smaller sizes with good reproduction.

The basic problem comes with the insistance of 10 point Times Roman
with a 6.5 inch justified line length. This was the standard used
with troff for typesetting. At 300 x 300, Times Roman looks
terrible. And a line length of 6.5 inches makes it unreadable even
when typeset. The maximum line length for easy readability should be
1-1/2 to 2 lower case alphabets or 39 to 52 characters. It is also
easier to read ragged right than justified.

So, if you start out with a type face that reproduces poorly at 300
x 300, make the size too small, make the lines too long, and
generally do everything you can to make your text unreadable, you
can expect poor results. I understand that Psychology Today did a
survey on written communication a few years ago that showed people
thought the same subject presented in a more obtuse style was more
significant -- if it was easy to read, it couldn't be important.

For those who are serious about reproduction, create your pages
oversize at about 129% (for 5-1/2by 8-1/2 pages) and then have them
reduced to 77% when the plates are made. This increases your
resolution to about 400 x 400 with virtually no cost.

For those who are serious about communicating, use legible type
families, larger type, correct length lines, and ragged right.

As a final comment, I have noticed that there aren't any real small
printers left in this country, only franchise operations. They not
only don't nkow how to adjust their presses, they are also giving
out bad advice about desktop publishing. So, if you want a real
printer, I suggest that you find a web operator and print a minimum
of 100,000 copies. For short run, you're better off on an office
copier than with almost any local press operator. (My appologies to
the NJ Association of Quick Printers :-))

Jim Winer ..!lzfme!jwi 

I believe in absolute freedom of the press.
I believe that freedom of the press is the only protection we have
	from the abuses of power of the church, 
	from the abuses of power of the state,
	from the abuses of power of the corporate body, and 
	from the abuses of power of the press itself.
Those persons who advocate censorship offend my religion.