Postcript level 2 or Postscript 3 printer ?

[Guillaume Dutilleux]

I am about to buy a Postscript laser printer for linux, OS X, and
Windows if absolutely necessary. In my selection, the last step of the
tournament is between :
Printer 1 (HP 1300): PS level 2 emulation and USB 2.0 interface
Printer 2 (Epson EPL 6200): PS 3 emulation and USB 1.1 interface
The prices are about the same. RAMs and resolutions are equal.

What is PS 3 compared to PS level 2 ? I've read that PDF is bundled with
PS 3. Does it mean that it is necessary to have as PS 3 printer when
printing PDF ?
A bit off topic : is USB 1.1 fast enough for driving a laser printer ?

Thanks for your help,

Guillaume Dutilleux
Strasbourg
France

 

[Helge Blischke]

I am about to buy a Postscript laser printer for linux, OS X, and
Windows if absolutely necessary. In my selection, the last step of the
tournament is between :
Printer 1 (HP 1300): PS level 2 emulation and USB 2.0 interface
Printer 2 (Epson EPL 6200): PS 3 emulation and USB 1.1 interface
The prices are about the same. RAMs and resolutions are equal.

What is PS 3 compared to PS level 2 ? I've read that PDF is bundled with
PS 3. Does it mean that it is necessary to have as PS 3 printer when
printing PDF ?
A bit off topic : is USB 1.1 fast enough for driving a laser printer ?

I won't give any comments on the printer vendors you mentioned, but, if
you ever
will face the need to print things not created by yopurself (e.g. PDFs
from others, e.g.
Adobe), you are better off with a PS 3 printer (think of smooth
shadings, CID fonts etc.,
even if oyu only heard of them without knowing what that really is).

Helge

 

[Waldo]

I would go for PS 3, because better PDF handling, more levels in gradients
etc., but USB 1.1 seems a little slow for me. How many pages per minute is
the Epson?

Waldo

 

[Guillaume Dutilleux]

Hello,

Thanks for the advice.
Epsons says up to 20 pages per minute for the EPL6200.

Guillaume Dutilleux

 

[Jan Gregor]

I think speed in no problem, many of us use parallel port which is
surely slower than USB 1.1 - and postscript files (rightly created)
should be smaller than print files for another printers.
Question is how fast is cpu that controls these printers and
comparation of load between PS2 and PS3. And for compatibility can be
useful if printers use original Adobe rip or some copy.

Jan Gregor

 

[Waldo]

I think speed in no problem, many of us use parallel port which is

surely slower than USB 1.1 - and postscript files (rightly created)
should be smaller than print files for another printers.

<quote>
Epsons says up to 20 pages per minute for the EPL6200
</quote>

USB 1.1 has an equal maximum speed as a parallel port...
If you want to get even to 10 ppm, USB 1.1 is way too slow for this :-(

You don't have much control how the PostScript is generated by the printer
driver. My experience is that they tend to get quite big.

I agree with you that the CPU should be fast enough for rendering the
PostScript. I'd reckon that the 20 ppm is hardly ever reached.

Waldo

 

[D B-W]

I think speed in no problem, many of us use parallel port which is
surely slower than USB 1.1 - and postscript files (rightly created)
should be smaller than print files for another printers.

<quote>
Epsons says up to 20 pages per minute for the EPL6200
</quote>

USB 1.1 has an equal maximum speed as a parallel port...
If you want to get even to 10 ppm, USB 1.1 is way too slow for this :-(

You don't have much control how the PostScript is generated by the printer
driver. My experience is that they tend to get quite big.

I agree with you that the CPU should be fast enough for rendering the
PostScript. I'd reckon that the 20 ppm is hardly ever reached.
[/QUOTE]
If the PS file contains a great deal of fully justified text, the printer
will operate at about half speed.
The end of line computations will take twice as long as unjustified
(ragged right) text.
Some PDF distillations place each character as an individual octal with 5
decimal place moveto's (1/100,000 of a point)
which produce lengthy files requiring considerable RIP thinking time.
e.g -12.15371 -2.39999 TD (\141)
David B-W

The Tinydict PostScript Mark-up
for Self-Printing Books
cappella-archive.com

 

[Ianchis]

\I am overwelmed by the expertise that is portrayed in this message

 

[LEE Sau Dan]

D> If the PS file contains a great deal of fully justified text,
D> the printer will operate at about half speed. The end of line
D> computations will take twice as long as unjustified (ragged
D> right) text.

Most PS-generating programs do the line breaking themselves and use PS
code directly to position the text. They can do it much better
natively than in PS code. Kerning, ligature substitution, hyphenation
come to mind. Seldom is the line breaking algorithm implemented in
Postscript and deferred to the Postscript interpreter.


D> Some PDF distillations place each character as an individual
D> octal with 5 decimal place moveto's (1/100,000 of a point)
D> which produce lengthy files requiring considerable RIP thinking
D> time. e.g -12.15371 -2.39999 TD (\141) David B-W

No. Number parsing isn't to hard for the RIP, and the difficulty
doesn't increase so much with longer numbers. (The time complexity
should be linear.)

 

[not availible]

Only Thing I see wrong is the words
"emulation" Get true postscript,
or commitment in writing that the printer
emulates postscript, not the windows driver.
My 25 year old Laser Pro still going fine in linux.
hasn't had a good windows driver since 3.11.
As for the other OS's just share it out with netatalk
and samba.

Canon claims their inkjet printer was postscript compatible.
Called them and got lots of yes it is postscript, yep, yep.
When I asked how much ram the printer could upgrade to
was told has 1 meg, and thats it. I pointed out you can't
make a color postscript file that small that has anything in it.
They finaly admitted it is the windows driver not the printer.
Robert

 

[LEE Sau Dan]

not> My 25 year old Laser Pro still going fine in linux.

2003-25 = 1978. I thought laser printers didn't exist as a product
until the 80s. When was the first?


not> hasn't had a good windows driver since 3.11. As for the
not> other OS's just share it out with netatalk and samba.

Is it a Postscript printer? If so, then the Apple Laserwriter driver
on Windows 95/98 should work.


not> Canon claims their inkjet printer was postscript compatible.
...........................................................^^^^^^^^^^

I know it is unfair for me to say this after reading your story.
But... You always have to pay attention to these tricky words. When
it says "compatible", interpret it as: it isn't the real thing. (If
it were the real thing, they would have simply labelled it as such and
asked for a higher price!)


not> Called them and got lots of yes it is postscript, yep, yep.
not> When I asked how much ram the printer could upgrade to was
not> told has 1 meg, and thats it. I pointed out you can't make a
not> color postscript file that small that has anything in it.

You can:

%!
newpath 0 0 moveto 1000 1000 lineto
0 0 1 0 setcmykcolor stroke
showpage

is far below 1Mb. A program can consume more RAM than the size needed
to store the program itself.

You're talking about the size of the frame buffer, right? Yeah. 1MB
is just enough for 8"x11" B/W at 300dpi.


not> They finaly admitted it is the windows driver not the
not> printer.

Does that mean that driver can RIP Postscript programs, so that I can
send it Postscript files and it can handle that? Does it work with
mapping a printer to LPT1: and then "copy myfractal.ps prn" in a DOS
emulation window?