On 2019-07-13, ropers <rop...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13/07/2019, 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 don't have advice on what's a good PostScript printer or PS printer
> brand, however here's why I personally consider Xerox a bad vendor and
> bad actor, because here's what's wrong with my Xerox Phaser 6130N:
>
> * It comes with steganography built in.[1][2] They never tell you
If you don't want trackable prints, don't buy a colour laser printer
of any brand, it is very common. Unsure about mono and inkjet printers,
I would tend to assume that they're common on at least most hi-res
colour printers.
On 2019-07-13, Jonathan Drews <easyfashioncloth...@gmx.com> wrote:
> 2)
> I read that Postscript printers produce superior graphics (from
> Xerox website):
>
> Pros:
>
> Graphical objects are often more detailed.
> The same print file should print identically on two or more
> different print devices. (This most beneficial when used for
> printing drafts on one printer then sending out to a printing
> company for production.)
A "postscript printer" is a printer that includes some kind of computer
running software ("RIP", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_image_processor)
that runs a program written in the postscript language to produce a page
image, and feeds that image to the printer side of things.
You can get the same end result with a less smart printer by running the
RIP on a computer instead, e.g. ghostscript is a RIP.
What Xerox are mostly going on about is that you can use the same file
to produce output on e.g. a laser printer, garment printers, prepress gear
etc and get the same results on all of them (within the limits
of the print technology). This probably mattered more in the past (and
maybe does a bit on windows), typical usage on unix and macos today
would be based around postscript or pdf anyway.
Nowadays one of the main advantages to a unix users of having a
postscript printer is that it has a high likelihood of working without
too much hassle, filtering out non-postscript printers nicely avoids
Windows-only "GDI" printers etc.
If I was looking to spend money on a nice printer I'd get one which can
accept postscript and PDF directly over lpr. (I'd be very tempted by
the hp "pagewide" printers. Also Kyocera seem good especially for
high volume stuff).
If I was looking for something cheap and cheerful then I would worry
less about postscript but look for something where I can see signs
of support in the ports tree. The HPLIP ports are nice and easy to use
and work with a wide range of HP and some other printers, easiest to
use with CUPS (it really isn't difficult), but if you want to avoid it
I believe the HPIJS part of HPLIP can be used without CUPS. I've heard
good things about brlaser for the non-postscript Brother printers too,
though most of them do have ps anyway. Even if keeping things cheap
I would definitely want something with an ethernet port (it doesn't
add much if anything to the cost) for flexibility of positioning the
printer, easier sharing between machines, and not having to mess
around with permissions on device nodes etc..
