Dilwyn Jones wrote: > First thing I need to ask is: with these Windows-only printers, what > is the printing mechanism? Do they take "Postscript" or some form of > raster graphics output (or is this essentially the same thing)?
Those two are on completely different ends of the printer language spectrum. Postscript is basically a complete programming language (I have seen raytracers written in it), "Windows" or "GDI" printers just take plain raster graphics in, the rasterization is done by the Windows driver. > Or do we then need a 'postscript printer' or 'postscript to > non-esp/p(2)' converter to finally get the output to the printer. Right. > In terms of postscripting files, Marcel has done us a favour here with > mps.bas, a SBASIC version (well written, quite easy to follow the code > with all the REMs and meaningful names) of mps which you can also get > from his website. Richard Urena's original program also comes with C > source for those who prefer to tinker in C. The mentioned epsonps is even cooler for translating Quill output. > Is the Windows-only printer rastering mechanism the same for all > Windows-only printers or are we back to the same old problem, need a > different driver for each and every model of printer? Different driver for each and every model. Therefore your solution is not practicable. The advantage of Ghostscript is solely that many non-ql programmers write drivers for it. A resource one could take advantage of. > Postscript. Aha! now how do I get that to the printer? COPY_N ... TO > PAR? In QPC this would indeed be how you could do it. > Oh, I need Ghostscript. Drat. I remember trying to set that up once, > never again. > > Back to the drawing board. If you prefer a drawing board over a printer... but if you are serious about supporting as many printers as possible there is NO WAY around using Ghostscript. In my humble opinion, that is. Of course one could now switch everything to PCL. But the instant this is done manufacturers will surely drop PCL support. Marcel _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.quanta.org.uk/mailing.htm
