printing on a pcl printer is slow!
Hello!
I have a Debian box that, among other things, shares an HP LaserJet 5 connected
to a parallel (ECP/EPP) port for a mixed win95/linux environment.
If I print from win95 everything is fine, but printing from Linux (that
involves using GhostScript to convert PostScript to PCL to feed the printer)
the printer is always stopping waiting and processing data.
I discovered that PCL generated from windows is small and compact, where PCL
generated by GhostScript is _huge_. As an example, a LaTeX-made 5 page 78Kb
PostScript with no images becomes 610Kb when converted to PCL and ready to
print, and I've seen greather growth.
I guess the slowdown is caused by the limited throughput of the parallel
interface.
I am using gs-aladdin 5.50-3 on a plain Slink system, input is filtered by
/etc/magicfilter/ljet4-filter (since there was no ljet5-filter), and
magicfilter is version 1.2-28.
And now, the questions:
- Why is PCL generated from GhostScript so big?
- Are there plans to optimize it?
- Are there plans to make libraries and utilities for printing directly PCL?
(like a dvipcl or direct pcl output for Gnome and KDE printing systems)
- Are there plans to make GhostScript interact with the printer to query for
installed fonts, or to make an utility to query for installed fonts and
generate a configuration file for GhostScript?
- Are there plans to make some printing system able to exploit printer specific
options? For example I know that the HP LaserJet 5 supports selection of
resolution, toner saving, printing multiple copies and such, but I have to
resort to the printer's panel to control these settings.
- Is there some way to turn a Linux box into an high performance PostScript
module for a printer?
- How can I print my documents at 12ppm from Linux?
TYA, Enrico
--
GPG public key available on finger -l zinie@cs.unibo.it
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