RE: An Idea...

[David Benson <daveb idealab com>]

> > > 
> > While I totally agree with you that not all softwares respect the
> > standards, there IS actually a de facto standard image format 
> > under unix
> > which is postscript. Normally, every software having a print function
> > should first print to a postscript file. And from there the unix print
> > system converts the file to a printer-compatible format. Ghostscript
> > does that for a lot of printer-models (check if your printer, if not
> > listed, is compatible with one of the listed models : gs --help).
> 
> However, the output from Ghostscript is less than ideal in many cases. At
> home for example, I have an HP Deskjet 610 which can print (in black) at
> 600x600dpi. The nearest Ghostscript can get is 300x300dpi, which is quite a
> noticable difference. Not to mention that it doesn't support specific
> features of my printer such as Econofast.
> 
> Hopefully, gnome-print should sort these issues (if I understand the ideas
> behind gnome-print correctly)
> 
> Or, I could save up for that Postscript printer... (-:

Not to mention that printing postscript to a pcl printer
is ridiculously slow (for example my hp laserjet 4m prints an average
of 1 page per minute of postscript when connected to my pentium 200;
under windoze it was able to reach its stated rate of 4ppm.)

Ultimately the "everyone speaks postscript" attitude works
better when your hardware really does speak postscript.

To further the point, people have made xservers
that run on postscript devices-- but
I doubt you'd want to use one w/o hardware acceleration.

- Dave