Re: On Demand Printing

Subject: Re: On Demand Printing
From: Kelly Burhenne <burhennk -at- SMTPGW -dot- LIEBERT -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 1995 11:56:01 EST

Text item: Text_1

>I read your post about your company's docutech system. My company is
>too small to lease such an animal. So, I'm talking to a local service
>bureau to whom I can send a disk and receive printed manuals in
>return. The benefit to me would be not to have to handle hardcopy
>masters, store pasted-up originals, etc.
>Is this a legitimate benefit in
>your eyes?

Sherri,

We, too, gave softcopy files to our print vendor who owned a DocuTech
before we leased our own. Personally, I found there were very few
advantages to giving softcopy rather than hardcopy. The way we did
it: we had to convert our files to a PostScript file (.pdl) before
giving them to the printer (so the DocuTech could read it). Which is
fine, except that .pdl files expand to approximatly three times the
size of the original file. Therefore, if your document is long,
you're talking about *a lot* of floppies to get it to the printer. We
looked into sending our files via modem, but the printer didn't have
one (I don't know if this would have worked anyway).
Therefore, several times I had to break up a chapter because it
wouldn't fit on one floppy (a MAJOR pain--headers, etc.). Also,
occassionally, the files would become corrupted (wierd page breaks,
etc.) because of the conversion (I'm assuming).

Additionally, I found that the quality wasn't noticeably better with
softcopy. When giving hardcopy to a DocuTech, it will scan the
original (therefore "creating" a softcopy) and make prints from this
softcopy. It is *a lot* better quality than a regular copier.

Now that we have leased our own DocuTech, we can send softcopy files
electronically through the Network, but I still feel I have more
control using hardcopy (call me paranoid!)

I hope this helps and I will be glad to answer any more questions you
may have.

-Kelly Burhenne
burhennk -at- smtpgw -dot- liebert -dot- com
Columbus, OH


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