Re: Printers using free software only

[Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:23:14 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Mi, 25 iul 12, 21:18:19, Brian wrote:
>> On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 18:02:11 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>> 
>> > On Lu, 23 iul 12, 18:05:45, Brian wrote:
>> > > 
>> > > All the major applications on the popular DEs are now geared up to
>> > > output in PDF format when printing.
>> > 
>> > PDF is kind of a subset of PostScript ;)
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#PostScript
>> 
>> An interesting perspective but how does that connect with the assertion
>> that
>> 
>> > . . . Linux applications generally output Postscript when printing. ?
>> 
>> I'll rephrase what I said previously:
>> 
>> No major application on the popular DEs outputs PostScript when
>> printing.
> 
> I was trying to point out that a PS printer is also a PDF printer.

And better than PDF, I'd say.

PostScript specification is by far a more professionally-oriented 
language that PDF format (aside comment: last time I checked you could 
embed a 3D video animation on a PDF sheet and all kind of 
"dynamicallities"... geez!).

Sadly, I can guess the why of this moving¹ :-(

***
Note: While PostScript is currently the defacto-standard print job file 
format/language for UNIX-based applications, it is slowly being phased 
out in favor of Adobe's Portable Document Format ("PDF") which offers 
many advantages over PostScript. *Mac OS X uses PDF as the primary print 
job file format* and Linux is making the transition. Both PostScript and 
PDF are complex formats, and we highly recommend using high-level 
toolkits whenever possible to create your print jobs.
***

Hint: *bolded text* is mine.

¹http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.5/spec-postscript.html

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón