Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 08:26:53 -0600 From: "Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1011277613.f002e1@mired.org> To: Sam Drinkard <sam@wa4phy.net> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Printing Question Message-ID: <15424.18349.302800.976927@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <22482712@toto.iv>
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Sam Drinkard <sam@wa4phy.net> types: > My point exactly Nils, > > You and I both know windoze is not customizable at all other than > changing a few doo-dads or eye candy. My whole point is, if we are > keeping up with "technology" per-se, and the defacto standard is now > PCL, why do we support the postscript language other than the same > reason we support things that too have been replaced with more versatile > apps -- like perl, to take the place of, or become more useful than say, > shell programming? Both have their place, but face it, perl scripts are > more powerful than shell programming, and can do everything that sh can > do. Again, my whole point in the discussion was if we are moving > forward to better things, why is it that PCL has not made it into the > generic (or at least add-on) packages for unix. Because replacing PostScript with PCL is *not* moving forward to do better things. It's replacing a powerful programming language that has device-independent graphics primitives with a primitive page description language that isn't even device-independent. Or do people regularly send you PCL files as a way of exchanging documentation? FWIW, if you use magicfilter instead of apsfilter - which is sort of like using FreeBSD instead of Windows :-) - and your printer supports PCL, you'll be able to print PCL files with no problems. Of course, the chances of *finding* a PCL file on my FreeBSD box are remote. > In this case, it's more than a matter of choice too.. I'd be willing > to bet there are lots of folks who, if have the need to print, will > do it on a windoze box rather than go thru the efforts (albeit very > little) to set up apsfilter or any of the other postscript > interpreters and print drivers. Just for the record, apsfilter isn't a PostScript interpreter. It's a huge, messy shell script that tries to figure out the type of whatever file you are printing, runs the appropriate command to translate it into PostScript - including using a2ps if you're printing ASCII - and then sends the results to the printer if you have a PostScript printer, or to ghostscript if you don't. The nice feature of apsfilter is that it handles the printcap hacking and similar things. Since I mentioned it, magicfilter is a C program that interprets a description of file types and commands to get something to send to the printer. It knows nothing about graphics or file formats, except as they exist in the example scripts that come with it - which scripts cover most printers that were popular the last time it was updated. Since most Unix graphics tools generate PostScript, a lot of things wind up being translated to PostScript and then possibly sent to ghostscript to be printed. The downside of magicfilter is that you have to edit the printcap file by hand. > IMHO, there should be some direction to having pcl or whatever > else the newer printers speak in included in at least as a port. Leave > the native PS printing in, by all means. I'm sure someone who runs a > server and has the pockets deep enough to afford a networked printer > wouldn't change a thing unless he/she could save a few bux when > something breaks. Um - I hate to tell you this, but there is no support for native PS printing in FreeBSD. The formats supported for printing are things that most people have never heard of, including "FORTRAN style text files". See the printcap man page for details. You can already print PCL files on a PCL printer, at least if you haven't installed apsfilter. What more do you want? <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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