

                        Seagull's Windows Drivers for
                        OTC Laser Matrix 1000 Printers

The Laser Matrix 1000 Models 5 and 6 from the Output Technology Corporation
combine some of the best features of laser and dot-matrix printers into a
single, high-quality label printing solution.  With the crispness and clarity
of a laser printer, you get quality output that rivals that of pre-printed
labels.  And, with the continuous forms capability of a high-end dot-matrix
printer, the OTC handles large volumes of low-cost, off-the-shelf labels,
making paper tray refilling a thing of the past.  Best of all, the OTC's
state-of-the-art paper handling in combination with a special high-speed laser
engine outputs labels at more than twice the speed of a standard HP or
compatible laser printer.

Seagull Scientific Systems' OTC printer drivers let you add the flexibility
and user-friendliness of Microsoft(R) Windows to the speed and power of the
Laser Matrix 1000 Laser Printers.

                          Two Drivers To Choose From

Seagull Scientific Systems has two OTC printer drivers: A PCL (HP) compatible
version, and a PostScript-compatible version.  Since both drivers come
together on the same diskette, you can choose the one that best fits your
application.  If you own a Laser Matrix Model 6, you can use either the PCL-
compatible driver or the PostScript-compatible driver.  If you own a Laser
Matrix Model 5, you must use the PCL version.

Given that owners of Model 6 printers have a choice of which driver to use,
they will want to read the following description of the important differences
between the two drivers, and how they interact with both Windows and the OTC
printers.

                         Using The Print Drivers With
                The Bar Tender for Windows And Other Software

The OTC Windows print drivers from Seagull Scientific Systems were originally
developed to allow our Bar Tender for Windows label printing program to take
advantage of the speed and power of the OTC Laser Matrix printers.  The Bar
Tender can mix unlimited combinations of different size text and bar codes on
any size label.  Although The Bar Tender has traditionally been marketed more
aggressively into the bar code market place, it has such rich text
capabilities that many users have started using it to print more conventional
text-only labels.  This is especially true with regard to OTC printers, since
our supplemental drivers are available for free with the purchase of our Bar
Tender for Windows label printing program.

However, Windows is such a flexible platform that we were able to design our
OTC drivers to work with any Windows program, not just our own.  Therefore, if
you have another label printing package, you can purchase our drivers for use
with your package and they should work fine.  (Obviously, we have been able to
test our drivers most thoroughly with our own software.  However, we have not
witnessed, nor have we heard of any problem running with any other software
package.)

                               The Speed Issue

OTC laser printers print at more than twice the speed of conventional HP-
compatible laser printers.  However, unlike regular page-fed laser printers,
the tractor-fed OTC doesn't get a chance to "stop and think" between pages
about what it is going to print out next.  This means that, depending on which
printer driver you use, how you configure Windows, how complicated your labels
are, and how powerful a PC you will be using, the OTC printer may have to stop
in the middle of a print job to allow certain types of print processing to
occur.  This stopping can be the result of a delay in the OTC printer as it
stops to think about something, or a delay in Windows, which still results in
the printer having to stop and wait.

Although the print stoppage in the Laser Matrix printers is usually very
brief, the stopping and starting can be somewhat jarring.  We therefore
recommend that you configure your system and choose the appropriate driver to
let your OTC printer operate with a minimum of stopping and starting.

                         The Windows "Print Manager"

The Windows Print Manager is a buffering system, similar to a print "spooling"
program.  The Print Manager works by letting your programs "print" to your
hard disk, instead of to your printer, which is usually much slower than a
hard disk.  Then, while you work again in any of your Windows programs, the
Print Manager prints out your job for you from the "background."

When printing from Windows to the OTC printer, depending on the speed of your
PC and the complexity of your labels, you may have to use the Print Manager to
keep your label printing from stopping and starting.

                   Enabling and Disabling the Print Manager

By default, newly installed copies of Windows start out with the Print Manager
enabled.  If you suspect that you may not need the Print Manager, you can
disable it by unchecking the "Use Print Manager" box in the Printers section
of the Windows Control Panel.

      Determining If You Need The Print Manager When Printing With "PCL"

In its PCL-compatible mode, the OTC is so fast that it may actually have to
pause for a moment every now and then and wait for Windows programs to catch
up.  This will depend on the complexity of your label and the speed of your
computer.  For example when we printed one-inch tall labels that contained a
mixture of bar code and text objects, we found that the OTC would briefly
pause every 8 to 40 labels, depending on the complexity of the label, when
using a 20MHz 386 system.  However, when printing on a 50MHz 486, no pauses
occurred.  By using the Print Manager and therefore buffering the print output
from your Windows programs, a steady stream of print data is always ready to
keep your OTC printer running continuously, regardless of the complexity of
your label and the speed of your PC.
             Determining When It's Advantageous To Use PostScript

Use of the Print Manager results in the printing of your labels being delayed
until the last label is done being "printed" to the Print Manager's buffer.
This means that, even though labels will print out very fast once printing
begins, when printing very large quantities of labels, there can be a
significant wait before your first label prints out.  However, as described
above, when printing in PCL mode, many systems will require the use of the
Print Manager to keep the OTC printer moving continuously.

Windows is able to handle Post Script print jobs more efficiently than PCL
print jobs.  However, the OTC Model 6 printer (the only OTC in which
PostScript is available) handles some type of PostScript jobs more slowly,
making it "stop and think" between labels when performing many common types of
print jobs.  So, whereas OTC printers in PCL mode are so fast that they may
require Windows to use the Print Manager to keep up with them, the Model 6
printers in Post Script may have to stop regardless of how fast Windows may or
may not be running.

We have found that printing any of the following to the Model 6 printer in
PostScript mode results in the printer stopping and starting regardless of
whether or not you are using the Print Manager:

   Any fonts other than "native" (or built-in) PostScript fonts.  This
   includes the use of TrueType fonts.

   Most types of graphics, including bar codes and all but the simplest
   graphics, such as a single square or line.

The only way we have been able to keep PostScript jobs moving continuously
through the OTC Model 6 is to print text-only labels that use the printers
native (or built-in) PostScript fonts (sometimes also referred to as "device"
fonts.)

                 When It's Okay To Disable The Print Manager

The one disadvantage of using the Print Manager is that your first label
doesn't print until Windows is done buffering the last label from your
printing program.  Read the previous two sections to determine whether or not
you might benefit from working without the Print Manager.

                     Choosing Between PCL And PostScript

If you own a Laser Matrix Model 6, this last section summarizes the points to
consider when choosing between printing the use of PCL and PostScript.

If you will be printing just text, and the choice of built-in PostScript fonts
meets your requirements, then use PostScript.  Since this allows you to turn
off the Windows Print Manager regardless of the speed of your PC or amount of
text on your label, your labels will start printing out right away and will
finish printing in the shortest possible time.

If you need to print bar codes, or other graphics, then PostScript will result
in your Model 6 stopping and starting, regardless of whether or not you use
the Print Manager.  (This is also true if you use TrueType text fonts or even
PostScript "soft" (or "downloadable") fonts instead of the printer's built-in
PostScript fonts.)  In these circumstances, you should therefore print using
PCL instead.  However, depending on the complexity of your labels and the
speed of your PC, the use of PCL may require you to enable the Windows Print
Manager.  This results in a longer period of time before your first label
prints out although, once printing begins, your labels will print out at the
maximum speed of the Model 6 printer.

                     Enhancing Your PCL Text Capabilities

One traditional advantage of PostScript over PCL has been a wider variety of
text font support.  However, with the introduction of Windows 3.1 and TrueType
fonts in May of 1992, PCL printers acquired the same rich text formatting
capabilities.  Although Windows in its base configuration only comes with a
half-dozen or so TrueType fonts, numerous TrueType font add-ons are now
available.  For example, Microsoft sells two TrueType Font Packs that list for
about $70 (and cost even less at discount stores such as Egghead).  With one
of these TrueType font packages installed in Windows, your printers can
operate in PCL mode with all of the font capabilities that were once reserved
for PostScript systems.


                        Optimizing Your Windows System

There are certain basic steps that you can take to maximize the performance of
Windows regardless of the speed of your PC.

  The use of SMARTDRV.EXE with a minimum of 1meg of RAM allocated to it will
  greatly speed up your disk access.

  In the 386 Enhanced section of the Control Panel, you should have your
  Virtual Memory settings configured so that you have a Permanent swap drive
  of at least 5meg and you should set it for 32-bit access.

  Although most Windows packages will run with 4meg of RAM, Windows
  performance is almost always significantly better when you use 8megs.

                          Setting Your Forms Length

When printing labels, your label forms will most likely be folded such that
your "pages" are multiple labels tall.  Do not set your software's page height
to the distance between folds, set it to the vertical repeat distance of your
labels.  For example, if you are printing using The Bar Tender, you would
bring up the Page Setup menu and set the Paper Size to user-defined and the
Paper Height to the same value used as your label's Vertical Repeat distance.
If you instead attempt to output multiple rows of labels per page, your OTC
printer will most likely pause between pages when printing.

                          Centering Your Label Image

With conventional sheet-fed laser printers, images are printed out "left-
aligned."  However, since labels and many other continuous forms are narrower
than 8.5 inches, this is often not desirable on the OTC printer.  Therefore,
when printing with the Laser Matrix 1000 Model 6, Seagull's OTC print driver
automatically centers your print image in the middle of the printer.  However,
the Model 5 lacks the ability to do this for you automatically, requiring that
center your image "manually" from inside of your software.  This is done as
follows when using The Bar Tender (this procedure will vary somewhat when
using other programs):

   In the Page Setup menu of The Bar Tender, set the Paper Size to User-
   Defined.

   Leave the Page Width set to 8.5", but change the Page Height to agree
   with the height of your forms.

   Subtract the width of your forms from 8.5" and divide the result in
   half.

   Take the result of the above computation and set the Right and Left
   Margins in the Page Setup menu to this value.
