Re: GNOME and printing

[Ali Akcaagac <ali akcaagac stud fh-wilhelmshaven de>]

> I don't think a double installation of Ghostscript should prevent you
> from using a modern printing system.

it does... at least the system that i maintain on my own.

> "<snip> With the increasing number of Linux distributions shipping, or
> considering shipping CUPS as their standard printing system, we have had
> many requests to provide patches to the standard GNU Ghostscript source
> distribution so that they can ship a single version of Ghostscript.
>
> Thanks to funding from EPSON, this has finally happened. Easy Software
> Products now produces maintenance updates of GNU Ghostscript under the
> name ESP Ghostscript. </snip>"

yeah the ESP ghostscript. i already read about it. this sucks again. ESP
ghostscript is going through 3 instances before you can use it.

alladin ghostscript (most actual)

 |
 V

gnu ghostscript (always comes out some weeks later and always an older ver)

 |
 V

esp ghostscript (based on gnu ghostscript, probably the oldest of the 3)

i mean, if i want to use cups then i want to grab the latest alladin ghost-
script cvs sources from any places, compile and install it as is and use it
together with cups. in it's raw pure version, not tweaked, changed, etc.
on the cups page they offer a lot of discussion and reading material in how
cool their technology is etc. unfortunately they don't offer one single line
describing how ghostscript ties together with cups or explained differently,
no documentation that tells you how you can use ghostscript as a native
postscript processor.

> I'm sorry that I have to disappoint you: According to http://www.cups.org/,
> CUPS is the primary printing system of Red Hat, Mandrake, Caldera,
> Conectiva, easyLinux, Lycoris and other Linux distributions.

that's fine for them. most distributions have no clue what they are doing so
people should forgive them for their failures :) as soon as one wants to use
kghostview, ghostview, gnome ghostview or whatever as soon their distros force
you to install ghostscript again. a step back imo we live in a time where we
want to printout things in WYSIWYG. now if you get different results in
viewing a ghostscript .ps file with a native gs version and you use the one
that comes with cups that probably got forked or changed or badly preferenced
then you deserve what you get after an printout.

as soon as there are clear documents on cups.org describing howto use a native
ghotscript version in cups (without forks, without changes, without applying a
40kb patch etc.) i am all for cups. but as long as it depends on that forked
off version of an ancient ghostscript rippoff called ps2raster as long i avoid
touching it.

> And those who use lpr or lprng should have no problems with CUPS, since
> it provides both System V and BSD style command line tools.

these backends are in no way compatible to what comes with lprng. they operate
slightly differently.

anyways a last sentence. it sounds now that i am all against cups. temporarely
this is true and i can only speak of myself here. but i also know about the
pros you get with cups. a clean interface, cool network printing features,
also maintainable over a webserver interface. makes the presence of filters
obsolete as far as i understand it. but as long as you cant get rid of that
raster2ps ripoff and substitute it with the real ghostscript _AS_IS_ as long i
don't touch it.

-- 
Name....: Ali Akcaagac
Status..: Student Of Computer & Economic Science
E-Mail..: mailto:ali akcaagac stud fh-wilhelmshaven de
WWW.....: http://www.fh-wilhelmshaven.de/~akcaagaa