At 08:14 4/08/97 +0200, you wrote:
>... ehem
>
>
>I pay respect to Sung's and Tadashi's work, but wouldn't it be easier to
>buy a PostScript extension for your printer then (if you would have to buy
>the Graphics Software anyways) ?
Can you get a Postscript attachment for a Canon BJ10e injet printer
and cost effective like minder printers? I think not! :-) You can get
them for a HP 1200c top of the range inkjet (but this stuffs up your
ability to print plain ASCII files) and costs $X00.
>If you don't have this option (because you lack the money or because the
>extension is not distributed for your printer), you should be aware of
>several public domain ghostscript derivatives that do the same job (except
>for point b, of course). This is especially important as there do not only
>exist plot-files in the postscript page description standard. The
>ghostscript-type software will be able to interpret ANY postscript-page you
>feed them.
Ghostscript for Windows (available at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/)
is getting better and actually now has a setup program but any program
that only has Postscript output can be potentially painful if you don't
have a relatively expensive Postscript printer. In programs such as
Microsoft Word - you can import Postscript files - but you cannot view
or edit them. GSAS is quite nice in that it does have an HPGL output option.
Using a shareware program like Printgl (for DOS and Windows), you can then
output this quite easily to almost any printer - and can also import and edit
these files with programs such as MS-Word.
---
Having the option for X-Y data allows you much more flexibility for publication style plotting as you can then utilise the capabilitiesof scientific graphing and visualisation software.
You can get an excellent free 2D scientific graphing program for Windows off the internet call DPLOT at: http://sliris.wes.army.mil/dplotinfo.html
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Just my 5 cents worth - I had better shush now,
Lachlan.
But not before a few PS's: If you are going to write a program that has only "one" style of graphics printer output - HPGL makes it much easier for users to utilize due to the wide number of HPGL utilties available. Postscript is more restricted and costly.
PPS: HP (or clone) PCL5 (not Postscript) based printers are excellent for crystallography and powder diffraction as they can handle the latest printer drivers for MS-Windows and pretty much all of theold crystallographic software - as PCL5 is backward compatible forall the laserjet and deskjet drivers - plus can handle plain ASCII as well.
Apologies for being so DOS and MS-Windows centered but that seems tobe where the effort is going now days?
Lachlan Cranswick - Melbourne, Australia _--_|\ Phone/Fax : (613) 9455-1345 / \E-mail : lachlan@melbpc.org.au \_.--._/Mobile Phone/Voice Mail : 0412-1141-31 vCrystallographic WWW : http://www.unige.ch/crystal/stxnews/stx/volnteer.htm