Re: The printing work has been merged

[Sebastian Rittau <srittau jroger in-berlin de>]

Am Montag, den 27.03.2006, 17:26 +0200 schrieb Alexander Larsson:

> > I have a question about generating postscript. Using
> > copy/paste method I implemented postscript print backend,
> > and it's working fine. While generated postscript is just
> > a bunch of page images due to cairo problems, the GtkPrint*
> > stuff works fine. So, shouldn't PDF backend be really a
> > "File" backend which can write PDF or PS? Or maybe just
> > separate PS  backend, in addition to PDF?
> 
> Do we want to expose a write-to-ps to everyone? PDFs are a well known
> way to send pre-rendered page layouts as files, but postscript is much
> less widely known. 

Two points to consider:

      * PostScript is the standard output format in the natural sciences
        and mathematics community. (Probably due to the prominence of
        LaTeX and dvips.) Also, since it's understood by many
        (semi-)professional printers it is often used for production of
        papers and preprints or as an intermediate format. On the other
        hand the only applications that would fit into this category are
        probably word processors, so general PostScript support is not
        necessarily needed.
      * PDF and PostScript have a slightly different application, in my
        opinion. PDF is used for "web publishing", i.e. stuff that's to
        be read online, but can also be printed out. It has lots of
        features that don't make sense on paper (links or automatic
        table of contents, for example). PS on the other hand is the
        lingua franca for communication with printers (the hardware
        kind). If you've got something as PS on Linux you can print it,
        transform it, do all kinds of silly stuff that falls into the
        "print preparation" category. It's a format very well suited for
        a (printer independent) "Print to file" option.

 - Sebastian