Review: StyleScript v3.8

PostScript Printing on Inkjet Printers

Company: Infowave Wireless Messaging, Inc.

Price: $99

Pros: Works as advertised without a hitch; easy to create and print postscript files; easy to install and set up; excellent documentation.

Cons: Doesn't work with PowerPrint on parallel port printers other that the HP 1120C; slower printing; CD says v3.8 but ReadMe and Print Driver say v3.6.

Rating: Excellent, 4.5 out of 5

July 6, 1998

Printing a file with Adobe PostScript language was once the exclusive realm of laser printers. No longer as Infowave's StyleScript brought PostScript printing to inkjet printers. The Adobe PostScript language implemented on an Apple or Hewlett-Packard Laser printer provided the foundation for desktop publishing about 15 years ago. It also gave Apple the intial head start in the desktop publishing field. Adobe PostScript permits very detailed printing of images and typefaces on laser printers, i.e. without jaggies. How well does postscript do via StyleScript 3.8 on an inexpensive inkjet printer? Let's see.

What You Get

StyleScript comes on a CD. Also included is a small 7"x5" 58-page printed manual.

The CD includes the StyleScript installer in English and German, a FileMaker Pro 3.0 Reader with the StyleScript Tech Info database, the manual in .pdf format with an Adobe Acrobat Reader v3.01, and a patch for Powerbook 1400/3400's to print from the single shared printer/modem serial port, again in English and German.

The printed manual is complete and fully illustrated. It has six chapters, two appendices (one covering troubleshooting), a glossary and an index. The chapters provide an introduction and cover installation, set up, and use, the latter in three chapters. Certainly anyone having reasonable experience with PostScript files will have no difficulty with StyleScript. I found the manual to be very easy to read and use, while not being particularly an expert in PostScript printing. The few minor difficulties that I did encounter resulted from my not reading the manual in the first place -- doing so after the fact remedied every one. I'll never learn.

The StyleScript Tech Info database has a FAQ with 25 technical documents. The application includes an engine to search the FAQ documents with key words. The Tech Info database significantly expands upon the number and depth of issues contained in the 6-page troubleshooting section of the printed manual.

Installation and Set Up

The system requirements are easy to meet. Only a 68020 processor or greater, Mac OS 7.1 or greater, 16 MB RAM and a CD ROM drive are needed. However, several of the supported Epson inkjet printers (600, 800 and 1520) require a PowerMac. The manual lists 23 printers being supported: ten Apple StyleWriters from the II to the 6500, the Canon BJC 4550, four Epson Stylus Color model's from the 500 to the 1520 and eight Hewlett-Packard DeskWriters/DeskJets from the 550C to the 1120C. The HP 1120C requires a serial-to-parallel cable available from Infowave. The Powerbook Duo also requires a special cable. Check Infowave's web site to get up to date information on the printers that are supported.

Clicking on the Installer results in the familiar Mac application installation dialog boxes. For all printers except the HP 1120C, only 3 decisions are needed: choosing one's printer, choosing English or German and choosing a direct serial or network printing connection. There is a page and a half of additional installation instructions for the HP 1120C with only a parallel port.

The key files installed are: Print PostScript, an application, StyleScript Printer Driver, an extension, and StyleScript Server, an extension. One uses these three files to control the work of StyleScript. Print PostScript does just what its name says by dragging and dropping a postscript file on it. The Printer Driver provides the set up options when "Print" is selected. The StyleScript Server allows one to monitor the print job. A fourth, Serial Switch is installed just for Quadra 900 and 950's. Of course, these PostScript fonts are also installed: Courier, Helvetica, Symbol and Times.

Use

I worked with StyleScript installed for a couple of weeks before posting this review to make sure nothing bad would show up with frequent use--nothing did as far as StyleScript per se. I did have two problems. First, it may be that something in StyleScript interacts with a third party system init or CDEV in my system folder to disable Extensions Manager. I write "may" because I was unable to isolate the cause of the problem. I tried a clean install of Mac OS 8.1 but re-installing StyleScript with all my third party extensions brought the problem back after several day's use. But to be fair, this problem may have nothing to do with StyleScript. Second, I could not get StyleScript to work with PowerPrint, a serial to parallel solution previously reviewed here. Otherwise, StyleScript itself worked perfectly for the entire trial period, printing text documents of all types and graphical images, postscript or not.

My test computer set up is as follows:

• PowerMac 9600
• PowerLogix G3 250 MHz CPU with 1 MB backside cache running 1:1 with the CPU
• 128 MB RAM
• MacPicasso 540/3D Overdrive video card combo
• Digital Research 19" monitor
• Epson Stylus Color 500 inkjet printer

Aside from just using StyleScript to print over the past couple of weeks, I conducted a couple of comparative tests to look at its speed and quality.

Speed: I created five test documents to check the quality of the printed page with StyleScript. The first (FONTEXT) was a SimpleText document in Palatino font to examine how well its fine serif features printed. The content of the document simply consisted of the keyboard letter keys in 9-point and 24-point and plain and bold text. The second document was the first page of the Readme file that comes with StyleScript. The third and fourth were a postscript files of the FONTEXT and ReadMe documents. The fifth was a 100K postscript (.eds) image (01D11 or "SUN") of clip art from MetaCreation's AddDepth application shown at right.

The postscript files (.ps) were created in several steps. The FONTEXT.ps and ReadMe.ps were created by first "printing" FONTEXT or ReadMe as a postscript file to the desktop. To do this, one selects "Print" from the File Menu and when the driver window opens one selects "File" as the "Destination" rather than "Printer". A .ps file is created by clicking the "Save" button. Then, one simply drags and drops the created .ps file onto StyleScript's Print PostScript application to actually print it. Print Postscript is terrific because one does not need to open a postscript file in an application that handles postscript files in order to print it.

SUN.ps was created by inserting 01D11 into a blank Microsoft Word 98 document and saving it as SUN.wrd. Then, SUN.ps was created the same way as FONTTEXT.ps using StyleScript's printer driver by "printing" SUN.wrd as a postscript file on the desktop.

Both of the regular text documents were printed using the "Normal" (this setting is called "Best" by the Epson driver) and "Best" (this setting is called "Super" by the Epson driver) settings. The three postscript files were printed by dragging and dropping them on the Print Postscript application.

The time to print each document, counting from clicking the Print button (or dropping the file) to the printer ejecting the printed page, as follows:

Time to Complete Printing Document (Minutes:Seconds)

Printer Driver/Resolution	FONTEXT	ReadMe	SUN
Epson/Normal (Best)	0:21	1:38	n/a
StyleScript/Normal	0:56	2:16	n/a
Epson/Best (Super)	0:56	4:44	1:26
StyleScript/Best	0:79	5:05	n/a
StyleScript/Postscript	1:48	4:58	5:12

In each pairwise comparison, the Epson printer driver is faster than the StyleScript printer driver. In fact, the StyleScript printer driver takes some 20 to 30 seconds before even beginning to print while the Epson driver only takes 9-10 seconds. StyleScript took 52 seconds to begin printing the simple FONTEXT.ps text and 3 minutes 38 seconds to begin printing the SUN.ps image. All this is to be expected, especially with the postscript files. The tradeoff is in quality, of course.

Quality: The printed FONTEXT files all appear pretty much the same whether printed as Epson "Normal" or StyleScript postscript. However, for the ReadMe printed pages the StyleScript "Normal" is better (sharper and darker) than either of the Epsons. The StyleScript postscript is the best. There is a very clear distinction between the SUN images. The Epson "Best" (or Super) has some jaggies, although slight, and extra dots like overspray. The Stylescript postscript image is dark, sharp and with no discernable jaggies at all.

Conclusions

StyleScript 3.8 works as advertised. It is easy to create postscript print files and then to print them. The printed quality of the postscript files is unsurpassed in my experience with my Epson Stylus Color 500, a fairly inexpensive and now discontinued inkjet printer. Of course, this quality comes at a cost and that is speed. I don't recommend StyleScript for everyday regular printing. The Epson drivers do okay at that and are much faster. However, if one wanted to print a perfect letter with a logo in the letterhead that looks like it came off a laser printer, StyleScript will do the job. This appears to be especially true for graphic images. StyleScript is easy to install, set up and use and the manual is excellent. The only drawback is not being able to print with PowerPrint to a parallel port printer except for the HP 1120C.

Copyright © 1998 by Bill Fox.
All rights reserved--no commercial use permitted without attribution.

Of course . . . . . . and I am proud to be an Evangelista! . . .