Your problem is caused by the VAX sending the LaserWriter control
characters that are understood only by DEC laser printers or third-party
printers with DEC emulation. On a DEC LN03, for example, in order to bold
a string, you have to enclose the string with 2 control characters, one at
each end. You also have to do this twice, for the top half and the bottom
half of the string. When not interpreted, this prints out as two lines,
sometimes with extra characters at the beginning or at the end of the
string.
PATHWORKS uses a print symbiont called VAXshare symbiont to convert VMS
text into PostScript data before sending it to the LaserWriters. Another
symbiont, called the PostScript printer symbiont, transfers data to a
Digital PostScript printer.
You'll need to send VMS text to the VMS queue system, and need a similar
"symbiont" to do the translation to PostScript. Unfortunately, no vendor
is selling just the VAX queue symbiont alone. They all come as part of the
package. You might want to contact Pacer and Alisa to see if they sell the
VAX print service separately.
MicroPhone won't solve this problem for you. And you can't use PATHWORKS'
VAXshare print service without purchasing PATHWORKS for Digital.
On AppleLink, you can find contact information for the various vendors by
clicking the Library Index button to view the folder structure in the Tech
Info Library. An alphabetic listing of vendors is in the Third Party
Company Directory folder.