On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 10:39:35 +1100 Andrew Bernard <andrew.bern...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Whatever page description > language your printer uses internally, the printer driver software on > your computer will convert your file to that language format and print > it. > [...] > Postscript itself is still highly relevant, PDF is essentially a > Postscript description, and lilypond can generate postscript, which is > rendered wth Ghostscript - a software RIP. While this is true, one may not underestimate the role of the printer driver or software RIP. PostScript is a full-fledged programming language and a PostScript RIP must carefully implement all programming language aspects in full. PDF (for printing) is a page description and hence easier to implement and to process. As a reference, there are several PDF RIPs (viewers) based on a number of PDF libraries, while there is only one PostScript RIP. For this reason I switched to PDF several years ago, after having been writing PostScript generating tools since 1985. For the end user, a PostScript generating tool has a big and sometimes hard dependency: a good software or hardware RIP. Having said all that, my printer is PostScript based (HP LasetJet 6MP). I run my LilyPond output through ps2pdf ( = GhostScript RIP ) to create PDF documents. There is (or maybe: was, haven't checked recently) a noticable difference between sending LilyPond PostScript directly to the printer, printing the PDF document from Evince, and sending the PDF directly to the printer (which uses GhostScript to convert the PDF back into PostScript again). See e.g. http://www.squirrel.nl/pub/xfer/lpev.png (two scans from the same document, printed directly (left) and from Evince (right)). So how to proceed? If you can find a printer with good PostScript support that is not too expensive, buy it. Otherwise, convert a couple of LilyPond output files to 600dpi PNG using GhostScript, and view with a good image viewer. If the output looks good, you can trust your RIP and go for any decent pixel-printer. If in doubt, Google is your friend. -- Johan _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
