Re: Q about PCL environment, and outputs from FM suite

[Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chris,

You are asking very good and valid questions.

Some thoughts ...

(1) Any "laser printer" from Hewlett-Packard in the last five years
except at the very low end has had "support for PostScript" albeit via
an "emulation of PostScript", not Adobe PostScript.

(2) Assuming that some of those printers don't support PostScript and/or
do so in a defective manner and/or the employer mandates that you must use
the PCL personality of such printers, printing to PCL from FrameMaker can
be BEST accomplished by always creating a PDF file from FrameMaker and
printing from Acrobat. In that way, you may maintain use of EPS files
(language level 3) and leave the worry about support for Type 1 fonts
or anything else of that ilk to Acrobat or Acrobat Reader.

(3) With Acrobat / Acrobat Reader 5.0.5, the only problems with PCL printers
tend to be in terms of out-of-date drivers on the systems of those doing
the printing. This is especially true when trying to print sophisticated
and graphically complex output from Acrobat / Acrobat Reader. Do not assume 
that the latest OS versions come with the latest printer drivers. This was 
especially true with Windows XP.

        - Dov


At 10/13/2002 07:23 AM, Chris Seal wrote:
>When I started work recently with my new employer, they asked me what
>authoring tools I prefer to use. They have now ordered for me FM7 (I'm used
>to FM3.1 to 6), full Acrobat, and full WebWorks. (I'll be the only person in
>the company using FM -- fine with me and my manager.)
>
>My questions are:
>1/ My employer's networked printers are all HP PCL. Their customers are
>regarded as having only PCL printers. Having Postscript printers in my home
>office and working for clients who mostly used Postscript printers I am not
>sure if there are going to be any problems in the PCL world. For example, I
>am used to PS fonts, even standard ones like Times and Helvetica. Now it
>appears I will use Times New Roman and Arial because there will be times
>when I must print from a FM file -- comments?. And will there be any
>problems setting up Acrobat, or with printing PDF to PCL printers? Also, as
>local printers are PCL, I take it I should not use EPS graphics if I want to
>print from FM -- comments?
>
>2/ Apart from print output, PDF, and HTML, what other outputs can I get from
>the FM7/Acrobat/Webworks combination? Can I get CHM for example. What if I
>want Winhelp (for Win2000 applications) -- do I need to buy Mif2go or can I
>get .HLP files direct from the existing tools?
>
>I may be imagining problems where none exist, but I would like to be
>prepared.
>
>Regards
>Chris Seal


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