tlug: Applixware and printers

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

>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Byrne <jbyrne@example.com> writes:

    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.

Long answer: You're really not giving up that much by using
Ghostscript on a modern machine.  Ghostscript is pretty big, yes.  But
Emacs uses a lot more processor time, memory space, and hard drive, as
do many large systems.  In return, you get a highly compliant
Postscript interpreter with many modern features (such as Postscript
to PDF conversion and vice versa) which can use any Adobe fonts you
may have, the ability to preview on screen using the same code that
will drive the printer, retargetability if you change printers or want 
to send a printer image to somewhere for some reason, etc.  You get a
number of utilities for reformatting text documents and so on.

I can't say much about support; I've been a beta tester so I get my
support in the form of bandages, splints, and occasional major
surgery.  But it must be really easy to get support since it's _the_
way to print on Linux.

    Jonathan> Speaking of printers, does anybody know of any work
    Jonathan> being done to develop a newer HP Deskjet driver for

The "unified color driver" for Ghostscript does a pretty good job.
Goes up at least to the 850s or 860s now.  Furthermore, it is
configurable (ie, you write a conf file that says "to change colors to 
red send `ESC $ % akai &'", rather than rewriting the C code), so it
should be possible to support kiwi-flavored versions as well as
vanilla and banana.  I don't use it much for color so I don't know
more than that.

    Jonathan> Linux?  The one that's in there now doesn't cover any
    Jonathan> modern Deskjets (goes up to the older 600 series ones)
    Jonathan> and doesn't seem to even support features of the older
    Jonathan> ones well, but maybe things are different under Linux
    Jonathan> and the application has to take care of that stuff, as
    Jonathan> in DOS?  Still too new to Unix to know the answer to
    Jonathan> that one.

Unix has historically been for workstations and thus biased toward
people with $$$ (or ￥￥￥), and uses Postscript as the printer lingua
franca.  Windwoes users historically (a) can't afford real Postscript
printers and (b) don't have organization support staff so must depend
on MS or (c) have mediocre organization support staff who depend on MS 
to get the system configured.  My sister claims that her boyfriend
defines "technical staff" at her company as "anyone who knows 3 or
more vendor support phone numbers by heart."

This is not a stab at HP's PCL or HPGL.  They are a different level of
interface, and HP has done a service by codifying them.  In fact, I
believe that Aladdin will shortly (within a year) release a freeware
(somewhat more restrictive than GNU, but not for personal use)
frontend that accepts PCL5 or PCL6 and runs it through the Ghostscript 
backend drivers.

    Jonathan> I wish there was somebody doing for printer support
    Jonathan> under Linux what XFree86 has done for video cards - even
    Jonathan> my somewhat-odd-but-nice Edge 3D is supported these

They have.  Their names are "Adobe" and "Aladdin" (aka "L. Peter
Deutsch and a cast of thousands").  Ghostscript is to printers
*exactly* what an X server is to displays: a platform independent
protocol with drivers for every conceivable hardware.

    Jonathan> days.  Everything is supported.  But get a high-res
    Jonathan> color inkjet and you've also gotten a real solid excuse
    Jonathan> to *always* use Windows for something.

The only excuses I have for using Windows any more are (1) colleagues
who insist on sending me Word/Wordperfect/Excel docs, and (2) Japanese
OCR.

HTH

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