Re: Printers using free software only
On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 23:26:37 +0100, Brian wrote:
> On Thu 26 Jul 2012 at 17:10:12 +0000, Camaleón wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:27:26 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
>>
>> > No, while PDF does perhaps allow such things, it's far far better
>> > than PostScript.
>>
>> (...)
>>
>> PostScript is a languge for machines not for human beings. It does not
>> have to be "easy" but "accurate". One only have to read the full
>> specification manual of both to start guessing "why" (hint: one of them
>> has around 200 less pages) :-)
>>
>> (note that I don't want my printer to "read" but "interpret" the
>> document I am sending it exactly "as is" and PS complexity is precisely
>> for doing so)
>
> Roger Leigh gave a good explanation of the role played by PDF in the
> CUPS printing process on Debian. You snipped most of it, including this:
>
> > A native PDF workflow is far, far better and vastly more flexible
> > than a native PostScript workflow.
Time will prove the role of PDF in the printing chain process. By now, I
only can say that my printers were manufactured to "speak" PS and not
PDF, so any additional convertion will only waste time to get the job
done and printer resources.
> To understand its importance you need a better reference than the one
> given to a page on the cups website a few posts back. For example, there
> is:
>
> http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/pdfasstandardprintjobformat
Let's recap to have a better understanding:
***
(...) This format has many important advantages, especially
PDF is the common platform-independent web format for printable documents
Portable
Easy post-processing (N-up, booklets, scaling, ...)
Easy Color management support
Easy High color depth support (> 8bit/channel)
Easy Transparency support
Smaller files
Linux workflow gets closer to Mac OS X
***
Look, I was not very deviated in my thought... There are four "easies"
listed as advantadges. Perfect, but I prefer accurateness over "easiness"
for the output jobs, thanks :-)
In addition.. do we really want to get closer to MacOS X? If so, why?
Just becasue CUPS is MacOS tool? The far we are from anything that smells
to Apple the better for the linux users >;-)
> To illustrate the difference between printing in the olden days and now
> we'll take someone who has set up a print queue to send a job to a
> printer as PostScript. A text file is sent to CUPS, which filters it.
>
> On Lenny: text --> texttops --> pstops ----> printer
>
> On Squeeze: text --> texttopdf --> pdftopdf --> pdftops ----> printer
>
> Note that the printer still gets PostScript (which should make you
> happy) and the advantages of the PDF workflow which have been described
> occur at the pdftopdf filtering stage.
How can be that adding an extra step (which increases time and resources)
is something "good"? And good for "who" (developers, printers or users)?
Aside note: I always have obtained better results when converting files
(mostly with image/binary content) to PostScript than PDF.
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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