[Desktop_architects] Presentation slides - with attached templates

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Wednesday 07 December 2005 09:04, Egbert Eich wrote:
> Kurt Pfeifle writes:
>  > On Monday 05 December 2005 22:32, Till Kamppeter wrote:
>  > >      -->
>  > >       Use of GhostScript for PostScript printers is not standard with
>  > >       linuxprinting.org. It is an exception, 
>  > 
>  > This is not my impression any more. It happens far more often than is
>  > healthy for my inner balance  ;-)
>  > 
>  > I receive quite a few inquiries from customers who were happy that 
>  > linuxprinting.org/Foomatic seemed to ship PPDs for their PostScript
>  > printers, and then turned to me asking "WTF? What is this foomatic-?*&#
>  > doing to my printers?"
>  > 
>  > I'll research a bit more and come back to this topic.
>  > 
>  > >       only being done if the 
>  > >       printers is of a lower PostScript level than the PostScript input
>  > >       coming from the applications. It must be manually activated
>  > >       (usually GhostScript is not called) and is only needed for very old
>  > >       printers.
>  > 
>  > I recently saw dozens and dozens of entries in a "foomatic-ppd" 
>  > subdirectory when outputting "lpinfo -m" for Infotec printer models 
>  > which even had the "recommmended" tag on them... This is not good!
>  > 
> 
> Could a reason for this be that the postscript engine used in these 
> printers is so bad that people perfer to use ghostscript instead?

Most definitely no.

The reason is that the user uses a GUI tool (Yast, kaddprinterwizard,
CUPS web interface...) and when he is at the point to select a driver,
there he immediately finds one which seems to be the  perfect fit 
(manufacturer name is the same, model name matches, "Postscript" and 
"recommended" strings are visible) and so he of course selects it.

> It looks like that fewer and fewer printer manufacturers license
> the Adobe Type Engine any more but use a cheaper one to reduce
> the number on the price tag.
> I had it happen to me more than once that a postscript engine of
> a printer barfed on me while ghostscript was still able to produce
> a decend output of the document in the printer's own language.

This doesnt make sense. "The printers own language" *is* PostScript
if it hosts a PostScript engine.

> Egbert.

Cheers,
Kurt