Thursday, March 15, 2001

I posted a beta version of a HP 4000 and HP 5000 WordStar 7.0d printer 
driver to the WordStar Forum download area.

The beta is a Postscript printer driver based on HP4 PS driver found in 
the HP4 Extra Database.  Before using it make sure that the PS support 
files have been installed for WS7d.

I had tried to create a PCL printer driver for the HP4000/HP5000 
printers.  While I was successful in creating an alpha driver which 
could access all the fonts in the printer, the font metrics for the PCL 
version of the PS fonts were off.

Thanks to Mark Fishman, who gave me the TFMs and AFMs for the PS version 
of the PCL fonts, I was able to create a custom database for the PS 
version of the PCL fonts.  I used that custom database to create the 
beta driver.

With the HP4000, Hewlett Packard introduced a printer which included in 
its resident fonts the complete set of PS fonts and the complete set of 
PCL fonts.  This was done in such a way that the two complete sets of 
fonts are available in whichever mode the printer is active, PCL or PS.

Since I do not have one of these printers, either the HP4000 or HP5000 
or one of its clones (perhaps the Lexmark Optra E312), fixing the PCL 
font metric problem for the PCL versions of the PS fonts was impossible.  
But the font metrics for PS are contained in the AFMs.  So, once Mark 
provided me with the AFMs, I created the PS custom database.

I had to play with font naming to get the driver to install all the 
potential fonts.  So far I have only partially reconciled the font 
names.  If the beta works, I will finish the font naming work.

Phil

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(Rev.) Philip G. A. Griffin-Allwood, Ph.D.
pgaga@auracom.com





