Discussion

By Joe Treacy on Oct 18, 2024

Terrific historical overview of on-demand, Frank. Always love the behind-the-scenes revelations. Great to hear Howie Fenton’s name, too. Thanks.

Joe Treacy
Director of Typography
Treacyfaces.com
40th Annoversary

By Dov Isaacs on Oct 19, 2024

Very interesting video, Frank. I remember using the Xerox 914 and the problems that it had with overheating at the fuser, sometimes yielding burning paper coming out into the output tray. Some of these printers were retrofitted with small fire extinguishers!

There were really two iterations of the Xerox Docutech. The first only supported input using Xerox's proprietary page description language, Interpress. The second iteration, which I was involved with at Adobe when I headed PostScript QA, supported Adobe PostScript, albeit by internally converting PostScript to Interpress and then interpreting the Interpress to created the rasters used by the DocuTech's imaging engine.

Subsequently, there was a model of the Docutech with a native Adobe PostScript Level 2 interpreter. (The irony of this was that John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, the founders of Adobe, left Xerox PARC to found Adobe in late 1982 when Xerox wasn't interested in productizing what became PostScript!)

One of the biggest issues with the early Docutech models was that they really were scanner/copiers with printer's clothing … and were was optimized for copying. Like all Xerox “engines” of the time, it was “write white” in which the laser was on for areas that would image as “white” and off for images that would image as black with toner. The laser width was typically wider than the resolution of the device; this was to prevent the typical “greyish background” you would often see with copiers of that time. It of course caused major problems with narrow lines, small point sizes of type and for that matter, delicate features of type, not to mention halftoning. As we used to say “write white was never quite right!” Xerox had to implement rendering code to artificially enhance those “small details.” Over time, Xerox did finally abandon the “write white” technology!

- Dov

By Howie Fenton on Oct 19, 2024

Thanks for the "Shout Out" Frank and BTW .. that was the first book written about On_demand Printing!