When I researched all this several years ago, I found it's not HP's development, it's a PostScript interpreter/raster image processor (RIP) that's OEMed from a company that used to be named Xionics and appears to now be named Oak Technology Products (www.oaktech.com). On their web site you can see they sell this type of technology and have suggestive reference to the HP product line, but neither they nor HP come right out and say it.
In the publishing world there are a variety of PostScript RIPs but in the consumer electronics market the only ones that seem popular are Adobe and Xionics (or now Oak, apparently). In my experience working at a typesetting company, we had generally better experience with the Xionics RIP than the Adobe. True, compatibility is an issue but unless you are doing truly funky things with fonts (like making your own) or need strict adherence to Adobe specifications for things like screening, you'll not be at much risk. In particular, performance and throughput were better in the QMS printers we loved dearly. As far as using ghostscript to RIP PostScript to raster PCL, that's going to be a waste of your computer's CPU and just increase the amount of data that has to be delivered to the printer. PostScript is extremely efficient and you're better off, if you want to print PostScript, to let the printer do the work. Note I'm not saying anything about cost/benefit here. I prefer PostScript because of its robustness. That's an opinion, others may prefer PCL on the same merit, but I'm not aiming to start a flame war on that topic. > I remember reading that in the past 2-3 years, HP switched from true > Adobe Postscript to an inhouse Postscript emulation. I have an HP > Laserjet 4MPlus which has a Postscript SIMM that has Adobe Postscript > trademarks printed right on it (and the manual states that it's > Postscript is licensed from Adobe) and that's from maybe 4 years ago. > > All Apple Laser Printers are (or at least used to be) Postscript and I > would imagine that they might still use true Adobe Postscript. > However, the truth is that HP has so much of the laser market, I'd be > quite surprised if their Postscript emulation was not extremely > competitive with Adobe's own product, but then again, stranger things > have happened. > > HTH, > > Daniel > > > Dave wrote: > > It seems like its getting hard to find a true Postscript printer - > > either Adobe has gotten too expensive for the manufacturers to license > > it, or the consumer market has given up on Postscript. The last > > Postscript printer I bought was an expensive Tektronix. > > - Dave Felt > > > > S.Salman Ahmed wrote: > > > >>>>> "BN" == Bob Nielsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > BN> It depends on what you mean by "true postscript". Yes, the > > > BN> 2100M is a PostScript printer, but uses a HP-developed emulation > > > BN> rather than Adobe firmware. > > > BN> > > > > > > And a printer that uses Adobe firmware would likely be more expensive > > > than one that uses some type of emulation ? > > > Salman Ahmed > > > ssahmed AT pathcom DOT com > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null >
