Re: not-even-newbie printer question

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Evans <peter@example.com> writes:

    Peter> -- excuse me, you seem to be under the misapprehension that
    Peter> I have either a sense of humor

My condolences.

    Peter> or a brain.

No such assumption.  You _might_ have one, but if not, you evidently
know where to find TLUG, so you don't _need_ one....  :-þ

    Peter> No, part of the problem was that I wasn't sure what
    Peter> GhostScript was.

Oops.  Forgot about that.  I got into the Ghostscript business in '90
when I was still running DESQview/X for want of a real OS (actually,
DV/X _was_ a real OS, but that's another thread and another ML).  In
fact, I'm the one who got Japanese and a couple of the drivers working
on that platform -- one forgets that not everybody works on the same
progs you did (or at all, these days :( ).  Even as late as 3 years
ago one still had to mess with Ghostscript configs to get things to
work.  Now it's just another package under the hood.

*sob*

<plug>
Anyway, it's not a Postscript emulator, it's a full-blown
implementation.  In many cases it is more faithful to the Adobe specs
than Adobe products are (Acrobat Reader is especially bad).  Aladdin/
Artifex/ArtOfCode is one of the big success stories of Open Source
(although technically speaking it is not OSD compliant, so much the
worse for the OSD as far as I'm concerned).  Peter Deutsch _retired_
last year (IIRC, at the ripe old age of 39).  Ghostscript includes a
separate graphics library, many contributed fonts, etc, etc.  It
drives X11, Windows, and Mac displays, so can be used as a previewer,
and also supports Display Postscript (presumably so they can sell to
OS mfrs, but I don't know if they managed that trick).

It's an interesting part of OSS history.
<unplug>

Note to Jonathan Byrne: yes, I know that won't verify.

    Peter> What's worse, I see no explicit mention of the HPLJIIIP,
    Peter> though I imagine that it's the same as the III but just
    Peter> slower.

If the book is in English, drivers for Japanese printers probably
won't show up.  Most Japanese drivers cannot be distributed with
recent Ghostscript because they are GPL.  (This is a special rms
pronunciamentum; "mere aggregation" is not allowed with Ghostscript.)

Most of the HPs are backward compatible.  Just start with a driver
that looks like the number is about right, then start working backward
until the printer works.  You'll lose resolution on very high-res
graphics, but even kanji are fine at 600dpi resolution (I've actually
used the laserjet driver (v1.0 about 1988!!) with basically
indistinguishable results).  It's usually slower though, and the spool
files _much_ bigger because the protocols get better with newer
printers.

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