Re: explanation pls on postscripts,ghostscripts & printing
Hello Joseph,
On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Joseph de los Santos wrote:
> Can someone please enlighten me regarding these subjects? I know that
> postscript is a programming language that describes the appearance of a
> printed page developed by Adobe in 1985 etc, and Ghostscript is an
> interpreter for the PostScript language, but how do I use it for printing?
You are perfectly right, Ghostscript is the interpreter for PostScript.
You only need this interpreter if you want to view PostScript on a device,
which doesn't natively support PostScript. There are several (usually more
expensive) Printers on the market, which have a built-in PostScript
interpreter, so you could send a PostScript file directly to the Printer.
However, if you want to print on a printer which doesn't have this
interpreter built in (or if you want to preview your PostScript file on
screen) you need something like Ghostscript, which will translate
Postscript into the device's native language.
> doesn't the magicfilter package already supports gs/ps?
magicfilter relies on ghostscript (and several other graphics conversion
programs) to translate your PostScript files for the printer (if it
doesn't have PostScript support built-in). In fact, it is more or less
some kind of collection of scripts, which try to determine the file type
of the things you want to print and invoke conversion programs with the
correct options automagically.
> I mean, right now I
> am using magicfilter for my hp deskjet printer but when I print something
> the fonts look ugly...kind of like fonts from the console
Might be, that you sent a plain text file to your printer? Try to print a
PostScript file.
> and it also
> doesn't print in color plus pics printed also look bad when compared to
> those printed from a windows machine. perhaps that is my problem?
Might also be, that you chose the wrong filter in magicfilterconfig.
(if you haven't used magicfilterconfig, try 'man magicfilterconfig').
So, if you give more specs about your printer, the commands you used to
print and the files you tried to print, maybe someone on the list could
help you.
Regards,
Daniel
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