tlug: Re: Ghostscript and HP Deskjets

["Jonathan Byrne" <jbyrne@example.com>]

>     Jonathan> I recently installed Applix 4.3.7 and as printer options
>     Jonathan> it gives you a choice of Postscipt Printer or PCL5
>     Jonathan> printer.  What if the printer on my machine is an HP
>     Jonathan> Deskjet 850C, and I neither have nor especially want a
>     Jonathan> laser printer?
> 
> Short answer:  install Ghostscript, and say "Postscript" to that
> question.  Add one of the printer filter packages, and it's as
> transparent as Windows.  Configuration is not as easy as for Windows,
> but once it's done, it's transparent.

Cool!  I'm interested in this!  I know Ghostscript went in with my
installation (I basically had it install the kitchen sink), so it's out
there somewhere.  I'm pretty green on UNIX, so if you could tell me what I
need to do and how I need to do it to set up Ghostscript, I'd certainly
appreciate it. 

So will Ghostscript let me do all the cool stuff like printing in economy,
normal, or best quality modes, change my paper size on a per printout basis
without editing the printer setup in Linux, etc., etc,?

> Ghostscript on a modern machine.  Ghostscript is pretty big, yes.  But
> Emacs uses a lot more processor time, memory space, and hard drive, as

I've got plenty of memory and can always get more, so that's no problem. 
I'm interested in something that works well and doesn't give me a lot of
grief (UNIX systems often seem to be designed to make everything as
difficult as possible :-)    ) while doing so.


> The "unified color driver" for Ghostscript does a pretty good job.

Perfect!  How do I set it up?

> Unix has historically been for workstations and thus biased toward
> people with $$$ (or ￥￥￥), and uses Postscript as the printer lingua

Are some of the low cost Postscript printers (I remember seeing TI ones
that were pretty cheap) any good?  I don't really want a laser, in so far
as I place a lot of value on color and a color Postscript printer *really*
is beyond my means :-)

Thanks for the info on Ghostscript!

Jonathan


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