Re: PDF on debian
>> However, the cost of implementation was high; computers output raw
>> PS code that would be interpreted by the printer into a raster image
>> at the printer's natural resolution. This required high performance
>> microprocessors and ample memory. The LaserWriter used a 12 MHz
>> Motorola 68000, making it faster than any of the Macintosh computers
>> to which it attached. When the laser printer engines themselves cost
>> over a thousand dollars the added cost of PS was marginal. But as
>> printer mechanisms fell in price, the cost of implementing PS became
>> too great a fraction of overall printer cost
>
> As processor prices fell, this turned around. The ARM or MIPS
> processor and RAM inside a $100 laser printer is a tiny fraction of the
> cost, and completely capable of running PostScript.
Indeed, a $5 RPi Zero is easily a hundred times more powerful than that
12MHz 68K. Moreover, nowadays printer manufacturers want your printer
to be on the internet [anything that gets them closer to a subscription
business model], and users also want their printers to be available over
the network without having to manage a home-server, so printers
necessarily come with a CPU powerful enough to run a web&print-server
over wifi, which again is a lot more than that poor old 12MHz 68K.
> Now, the licensing cost from Adobe for PostScript is terribly
> high, but open source rode to the rescue: most printers say "PS
> compatible" rather than PostScript(tm). They tend to run Linux
> and GhostScript -- here's the Debian package description:
Postscript has become sufficiently niche that I expect many printers
don't bother to support it even though they easily could.
Nowadays PDF is what matters: it's the standard format for driverless
printing (along with a mix of JPEG, PWG raster, or PCLm depending on
which driverless printing standard you're talking about). Admittedly,
standards like IPP Everywhere require support only for the PWG raster
and JPEG format, while the PDF format is relegated to "should be
supported", but PDF is so pervasive and so easy&cheap to support on
current hardware that it doesn't make much sense not to support it,
except maybe for printers that focus on things like printing photos.
[ Note: this is just a guess, I have no actual data to back it up :-) ]
Stefan
Reply to: