[geeks] Printers, postscript, networking...

[Michael Parson]

On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 10:37:54PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> Sat, 22 Apr 2006 @ 02:23 -0400, Dave Fischer said:
>
>>> If anything, it should improve over time.
>>
>> Unless they decided to save money by not liscencing Adobe's PS firmware
>> and screwed up something with the alternative...
>
> You mean HP used to have true PostScript? That would explain a degradation in
> quality and speed.

Yeah, back in at least the the LJ III days, you could get a real Adobe
PS SIMM to plug into your printer and get real Level 2 PS.  That, along
with the Jet Direct card, would let you plug your HP printer into your
Mac network and things would Just Work [TM].

Ah, long ago those days have passed.

> Of course, I read today that HP PostScript is an emulation that sits
> on top of PCL, so no licensing should be involved.

Yep.

> Maybe they used to have real PostScript and changed to emulation.
> Might not be HP's fault, because Adobe is notoriously hard to deal
> with.

Again, yep.

> Also, I can see why the emulation would not be as good, but it still
> should slowly improve, just like GhostScript has.

GS has gotten a LOT better over the years, to the point that I'd rather
use GS to generate my PCL than use the HP built-in PS emulation.  It's
gotten even better now that HP has gratis source-code drives & gs
plugins.

> Then again, HP has not been itself in recent years.

That is the sad truth.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org

That is the sad truth.

That is the sad truth.