On Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:34:31 -0700 norseman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> dijo:
> Joe Grech wrote: > > What advantages are there if any in saving a file in pdf for printing? Tks In addition to Steve's response, there is one additional advantage - also related to printing. Many have heard of PostScript, a page description language, and some have also heard of Page Composition Language (PCL). Adobe owns PostScript, but publishes the spec and allows others to use it. Some printers come with PostScript built in, but if the printer manufacturer wants genuine Adobe PostScript they must pay a royalty to Adobe. To get around this Hewlett Packard developed PCL as an alternative. Hewlett-Packard owns PCL and requires other printer manufacturers to pay them royalties if they want to include in on their printers. To get around the royalty problem there are emulation packages available that printer manufacturers can license from third parties. For example, if a printer comes with "PostScript emulation" instead of genuine Adobe PostScript, chances are that the PostScript emulation was licensed from Xionics. Ditto for PCL - there are third party vendors who will license a PCL clone to a manufacturer to get around Hewlett-Packard's ownership of PCL. Hewlett-Packard doesn't seem to be concerned with the clone vendors, but Adobe does. Adobe makes quite a bit of money licensing genuine Adobe PostScript to printer manufacturers. In the past Adobe could always rely on the fact that the vendors of PostScript clones didn't do a perfect job. Users would get occasional print errors. But nowadays the PostScript clones are darn near perfect. Adobe sees its revenue from licensing PostScript to printer vendors diminishing. To get around this Adobe has come up with a brand new idea - the Adobe PDF print engine. I own a Xerox Phaser 7400DN which comes with genuine Adobe PostScript level 3, a PCL clone, and genuine Adobe PDF print engine. If I send a PDF file to this printer it images almost instantly. Why did Adobe come up with the Adobe PDF print engine? Because they have lost control of the PostScript market to the clone vendors. So far no one has cloned the Adobe PDF print engine, so Adobe can push it to vendors of high end laser printers. Adobe claims it is the wave of the future. For now I can say that it is really cool. I print a lot of textbooks from PDF files, and printing to the Phaser 7400DN is a dream. So the bottom line to all I have said is that printing from PDF files is a definite advantage if you are printing to a high end printer. And in the future more and more printers will come with the Adobe PDF print engine, so it will become even more advantageous. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
