[Desktop_printing] Re: [Printing-architecture] Printing Summit memo (for tomorrow sc meeting)

Ralph Giles giles at ghostscript.com
Wed Feb 8 14:08:27 PST 2006


On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 02:43:11PM +0900, Osamu MIHARA wrote:

> One thing I'm concerning is that transition of printing spool format 
> from PostScript to PDF.

Yes, this is something of a disadvantage with moving to PDF (just as 
it's an advantage for document viewers). Streamability for 
manipulation and printing pipelines is also supposed to be an (optional) 
feature of Microsoft XPS.

>                                                 Also streamed PDF is 
> provided from Adobe, but I heard that streaming technology about PDF 
> format is patented by Adobe.

Do you have more details on this? Note that Artifex (commercial 
ghostscript licensors) have a US patent application on this.

I can't find a direct link, but you can search by application number at 
uspto.gov. Deutsch, Levien and Johnston, " Method and apparatus for 
reordering an arbitrary order signal sequence into a streamable signal 
sequence" USPTO application number 20050203919 .

Anyway, it's possible something like the spec re-arrangement documented 
above would get used for printers, but more likely things will remain 
as they are now, where a direct PDF printer will have a disk or at least
enough ram to buffer the whole document, and everyone else uses a dumb
printer with translation in the driver on a host that can do the same.

I was under the impression that most print queues spooled the entire 
print job anyway, even with Postscript. Is this not the case?

 -r



More information about the Printing-summit mailing list