On Sat, Jul 13, 2019 at 08:06:07AM +0200, Jonathan Drews wrote: > Hi Folks: I need some recommendations on what brand of printers will > work > with Ghostscript (Postscript). The cartridges for my 15 year old HP > Deskjet have gotten too expensive. I know Xerox makes some > Postscript printers. Are there any other manufactureres of Postscript > printers? I am running OpenBSD 6.5 as a desktop. Any advice would be > appreciated. Also, I just want to use printcap and lpd. I would like to > avoid CUPS. Kind Regards, > Jonathan
I am not sure why you want to avoid CUPS. In case it is not clear, Postscript is just a programming language (stack based, somewhat like contorted Forth with graphics instructions, go have a /usr/bin/less on your favourite *.ps file and see). The printer "supporting Postscript" is just the one with CPU and enough memory to run interpreter inside the box. Thus, just like one feeds txt file to raw printer and gets raw txt display, so - I think - one feeds ps file and printer runs it, resulting in printing page (consecutive pages). I believe no special filter is necesary, because ps files start with magic line (well, some do not, possibly those produced by some proprietary programs, but I cannot recall right now) and chances are, PS-printer will recognize such line and act accordingly. However, I have seen documents, even single pages, with so many details that Ghostview running on relatively recent computer choked on it. I have no idea how much memory PS-printer can have, but I would not count on it having enough. My current desktop has 12gigs and four cores (not very fast), but obviously only one is tired by GV. I would try going with CUPS and printer with good resolution. Unless you have very specific needs requiring exactly such device (hard to tell, specific people have specific needs). But why running an interpreter and producing a bitmap onboard a printer would be better than running an interpreter (possibly up-to-dated) and sending a bitmap to the printer? Would one be able to spot a difference? Just curious. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:[email protected] **
