> Basically you are very correct David in your > statements. Except on one. The Linotype machines, L300, and L500, and > their relatives, and descendants, are actually output devices,
Correct. > and > predate Linux and actual desktop publishing by about three years. That > from having worked with one, on a midrange based system. Umm, this is personal experience talking. Sherman, set up the Wayback Machine....8-) The Linotype brand is much older than that, having been created in the late 1930s as a slug casting system for newsprint and professional press job set up that cast molten lead into full lines of type as lead "slugs" (each representing a line of text, and thus the name "line-o-type") that were fitted into a page frame and used in offset and pressure-backed printing presses. The Linotype (note the missing e) PostScript front ends were released 8 months following the public release of Adobe PostScript version 1, replacing an earlier proprietary Linotype page description language and competing with the Xerox Courier network printing protocol. The major reason I put the distinction in my note is that Linotype devices (and other professional presses) generally operate at 2400 dpi resolution (about 4 times the resolution of the typical Canon-based desktop laser printer) and bitmaps for 600 dpi printers look LOUSY on that type of device. The stroke-based character font definitions are interpreted by the PostScript interpreter in the press device, and thus are rendered at full device resolution, producing significantly better output. I've used the actual lead-slug-producing kind. They're fun. Loud, clanky machinery, a bazillion motors moving rods and gears, molten metal, plus cryptic commands and having to type like you're raising a ten pound weight with your fingers all in one lovely device. It's a device that only an engineer could love, and it's a beauty in a gross electro-mechanical sense... -- db
