On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 06:03:05AM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > 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. I have had difficulty getting cups to work in the past. I am just a simple desktop user, so I really don't have a great grasp of computer fundamentals. That begs the question as to why a desktop user would use a complicated system like OpenBSD. Short answer:
1)Speed and stability. OpenBSD is fast! What prompted this post was that my Windows 10 computer completely mangled a simple print job when I needed to get a shipment off. I am so done with things being constantly broken by Windows updates. 2) OpenBSD man pages are the best! 3) OpenBSD is very stable. 4) Utilities like dc, mg, pdksh, Vi and EMACS are indispensible. 5) Dump and restore are important because I have a lot of expensive embroidery files on my OpenBSD computer. 6) Xterm based Mplayer plays videos better than Windows! That is super important because I have a lot of video classes. So for all those reasons, I want to get printing working. I never could get CUPS working in previous versions of OpenBSD. Also, IIRC CUPS requires chown and chmod to certain /dev files. I am loathe to do that. I really don't want to mess with root file permissions. IMHO, if you need a service, then add your account to the appropriate group in /etc/groups. > 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. > According to Xerox's web page on Postscript, they claim that Postscript gives higher quality renderings: "Unlike PCL, PostScript is device independent. This means that the PostScript language creates all of the print data and does not rely on the printer for print data. This allow the output to be consistent when printed on more than one type of printer or print device. Specifically, the graphic objects will be consistent and in some cases of higher quality than PCL." > -- > 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:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
