I did some experimentation with the lpr part of mapprint.tcl tonight. I'm thinking that maybe I've done this before and come up with the same result--and that is why I turned to ghostscript.
TclTk will output to a PS file that looks just fine when I open it. However, just sending this to lpr (>>lpr file.ps) gives a very poor result. The map is up against the upper right edges of the page, rather than being centered. It is clipped on all edges but the bottom and clipped a significant amount on the left side of the map (a side which is NOT against the edge of a page). Is there something I'm missing in sending this to lpr? Michael On 9/4/07 3:06 AM, "Glynn Clements" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > William Kyngesburye wrote: > >>> Yea. TclTk (at least the packages we use) doesn't have any good built in >>> printing routines. I wrote one that is included in the GUI, but it needs >>> ghostscript to translate from the native postscript of the canvas >>> into print output. > > On Unix, "print output" traditionally *is* PostScript. > > The backbone of most Unix printing setups is the use of Ghostscript to > make your printer look like a PostScript printer. If you happen to > have an actual PostScript printer, the Ghostscript step is omitted. > > There's no need for gis.m to invoke Ghostscript itself when printing; > it can just feed PostScript to "lpr" (with CUPS, you can feed a lot of > other formats, but PostScript is the one format which is likely to be > accepted on non-CUPS systems). > > Moreover, using gs to render to an image format then sending the image > to lpr will invariably produce worse results than letting the printing > system perform the rendering (or sending the data directly to a > PostScript printer). > >> I got to thinking about the GS license (it's GPL now) and I'll either >> have to make it a separate download or find an existing Mac binary, >> or maybe use an older AFPL GS. Maybe there's an equivalent in the >> system somewhere - it already uses CUPS for printing, maybe there's a >> CLI postscript renderer... > > "lpr file.ps" should work. > >> Is your GUI printing use of GS the only thing in GRASS that uses it? >> Does it generate an image, or print-ready postscript? > > Looking at mapprint.tcl, it either: > > 1. Generates an image and sends it to "lpr". (CUPS will first convert > this to PostScript, then either invoke Ghostscript to convert it to > the printer's raw image format or send it directly to a PostScript > printer). > > 2. Invokes gs with DEVICE set to a user-defined string. [This one > looks wrong; it doesn't appear to send the output anywhere.] > > 3. Generate a PDF. __________________________________________ Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology Director of Graduate Studies School of Human Evolution & Social Change Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity Arizona State University phone: 480-965-6213 fax: 480-965-7671 www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton _______________________________________________ grassuser mailing list [email protected] http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser
