Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 22:16:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net> To: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> Cc: FreeBSD-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: keyboards Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9910172210220.421-100000@picnic.mat.net> In-Reply-To: <199910180104.UAA32768@nospam.hiwaay.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, 17 Oct 1999, David Kelly wrote: > > A postscript printer is a bad deal. > > Quite to the contrary, I buy nothing but Postscript printers. Haven't > tried HP's imitation-Postscript but its only a matter of time before we > try one. > > Postscript *is* my printer's native language. Altho it also includes an > HPCL-4 interpreter (written in Postscript, I suspect) built in. > > I find printed postscript output generated by appropriate postscript > print drivers (such as those a Macintosh uses) download quickly, print > quickly, and print accurately. > > Strange that they print quickly as its not unusual for a Mac to generate > 1MB per page if one prints Postscript to file. Older Mac postscript > drivers like to initialize the printer with a body of common > subroutines. When printing to file they included those routines. With > version 8.6 drivers the Postscript files appear to be smaller but I've > not bothered to disect one lately. Plus its been a very long time > (years) since I saw my Mac say it wanted to initialize the printer. > > If the original material consists of GIF and JPEG files as is usually > the case with a web browser, then expanding and encapsulating that > binary data into postscript makes for a slow print job. Well, I used to be of that opinion, then my postscript printer broke down, I didn't have the cash to get another laserjet, so I went and got me a real cheapy DeskJet, and started using ghostscript to do my printing. I tell you, my printing rate went up about 200 percent. I used the same parallel interface on both printers. Not only that, but it was a common occurence to hit something generated by a Windows driver or (especially) Mac-generated postscript, that my postscript printer just couldn't handle. I could view it using ghostview, but not print it. That just about never happens now using ghostscript and my far cheaper printer. Maybe I'm missing something, but my own experience says a postscript printer is a bad deal. I'd have to see some good reason to go back to using a native postcript printer, even though I nearly always printer postscript source. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include C programming, Electronics, 213 Lakeside Dr. Apt. T-1 | communications, and signal processing. Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run picnic.mat.net: FreeBSD-current(i386) and (301) 220-2114 | jaunt.mat.net : FreeBSD-current(Alpha) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.10.9910172210220.421-100000>