Re: [Gnome-print] Re: [Gimp-print-devel] An introduction to gnome-print (fwd)

[Robert L Krawitz <rlk alum mit edu>]

   From: Miguel de Icaza <miguel@helixcode.com>
   Date: 09 Jun 2000 02:59:57 -0400

   > 7) Spooler capacity/network bandwidth.  Raster files can easily exceed
   >    50 MB/page.  A single 100 page print job can consume 5 GB of disk
   >    space, and if the printer is remote, require almost 10 minutes on a
   >    100 Mb Ethernet just to transfer.

   That is the worst case scenario.  For text Chema has the output down
   to 30k per page which is just a mere 30 megs.  Of course, this
   requires using `advanced' techniques like PCL compression.

I challenge you to accomplish the same thing with ESCP/2 raster.  I
just did this on my resume (ALL text).  720 dpi lowest quality (which
tends to band quite badly, even on text).  I'm doing heavy compression
on the raster output.  I'm using a mode that's optimized for text;
it's completely useless if there is any tonality whatsoever.  I got a
1 MB file (1086476 bytes, to be precise).

The Postscript file, incidentally, is 17652 bytes.

   Tell me again, what is wrong with this setup?

PCL is a much more intelligent language than ESCP/2 raster.  It
actually has concepts such as "text" and "fonts".  ESCP/2 raster
doesn't.  You're generalizing from a language that's fairly close to
PostScript in capability to one that has no intelligence WHATSOEVER.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rlk@alum.mit.edu>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf@uunet.uu.net
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton