jk3n+@andrew.cmu.edu (John Stephen Kalucki) (10/23/87)
Is there currently a way for my Amiga to drive a Postscript printer? I'd like to be able to print files from the standard utilities, and not have to run them through a special filter (but that would be ok too). I guess I am looking for a Postscript printer driver. Are there any word processors out there that will do the same? I have a little Public Domain program that converts IFF files to Postscript, but does a bad job. Images come out "blocky" and in a far lower resolution than if I used a dot matrix printer. This also doesn't solve the problem of printing from a DeskTop Publishing program. -John Kalucki ARPA:jk3n@andrew.cmu.edu UUCP:...(some big name)!andrew.cmu.edu!jk3n, I guess
bryce@hoser.berkeley.edu (Bryce Nesbitt) (10/25/87)
In article <4VTpeRy00XoDzE004j@andrew.cmu.edu> jk3n+@andrew.cmu.edu (John Stephen Kalucki) writes: > >Is there currently a way for my Amiga to drive a Postscript printer?... > ...printing from a DeskTop Publishing program.... All the better DeskTop Publishing programs will output Postscript. (Someone is about to kill me :-) This usually involves supporting some subset of the available fonts on a typical Laserwriter and conversion of color images to the 256 level gray scale that is the best postscript can do. (without nasty color separation...) For printing, say, 300 DPI graphics, there is no real support. You would need to create the huge bitmap with, say, DPaint, then shrink it down once in the DTP program. Would you believe that some DTP programs do the transformation at screen resolution (~75 DPI) rather than sending the entire bitmap to the postscript device and letting it do the transformation at 300 to 1270 DPI? Adobe illustator or equivalent is not available. 'nuff said? For some strange reason, nobody has written a printer driver that would look like a standard preferences printer, yet output postscript. This type of driver would not be expected to take full advantage of postscript... it would act a lot more like the Diablo emulation mode on the Apple LaserWriter (plus). As usual, I'd love to be wrong on any of the above points |\ /| . Ack! (NAK, SOH, EOT) {o O} . bryce@hoser.berkeley.EDU -or- ucbvax!hoser!bryce (") U "Here. This'll shoot the lips off a cockroch" -Freedom Fighter
lachac@topaz.rutgers.edu (Gerard Lachac) (10/26/87)
In article <21427@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> bryce@hoser.berkeley.edu (Bryce Nesbitt) writes: >In article <4VTpeRy00XoDzE004j@andrew.cmu.edu> jk3n+@andrew.cmu.edu (John Stephen Kalucki) writes: >> >>Is there currently a way for my Amiga to drive a Postscript printer?... >> ...printing from a DeskTop Publishing program.... > > >For some strange reason, nobody has written a printer driver that would look >like a standard preferences printer, yet output postscript. This type of >driver would not be expected to take full advantage of postscript... it would >act a lot more like the Diablo emulation mode on the Apple LaserWriter (plus). > > As usual, I'd love to be wrong on any of the above points Since I didn't want to disappoint you, I figure I would prove you wrong :-) This text file is from an ARC file I found on a local BBS. Of course I haven't had a chance to try it yet, midterms can be nasty things. I promise to upload the binary later on this week. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ POSTSCRIPT PRINTER DEVICE The postscript printer device included in this archive is Copyrighted by Integrated Systems Inc., 1987. All rights are reserved. It is put in the public domain for use by anyone for non-commercial use only. When I receive my Apple Laser Writer, it worked great with the PageSetter but to print a simple text file I had to keep switching into emulation mode. There are public domain IFF to POSTSCRIPT converters but they do not provide much control of the output. This driver is intended to replace the "sys:devs/printer.device" device driver. To install it, copy "postprint" to "sys:devs/printer.device". This device driver will only work with POSTSCRIPT printers. Make sure that you save the real "printer.device". Once installed, the POSTSCRIPT printer can be used from programs like CLImate, Word Perfect, Deluxe Paint. Both the WRITE and RAWWRITE commands behave the same. The driver assumes that the POSTSCRIPT printer is a serial printer. The preferences should be used to select the baud rate. Packages like PAGESETTER that support POSTSCRIPT can still use the printer through the serial port. Text Support The current AMIGA printer commands and ESCAPE sequences supported include line spacing, pitch, normal, bold, underlining, italics, the left margin, page length (in lines), and NLQ mode. NLQ mode switches between the Courier and Times Roman fonts (so does DRAFT/LETTER mode). Raster Dumps Currently 16 shades of gray form most pictures. The only exceptions are HAMs which use 256 shades, and "Black and White" mode which uses 2 shades. White is represented as the lightest color of gray except in the "Black and White" mode. The margins and page size in lines define the maximum print area. I think all of the different special modes are supported but I don't think they all have been tested. SPECIAL_ASPECT is supported but I was surprised that it does not seem to be used very much. I have tried printing from PAGESETTER (treating the LASERWRITER as a normal printer), GRABBIT (you have to use SIDEWAYS print), and DELUXE PAINT. General Raster dumps are treated like text when it comes to page boundaries. In other words, if a raster dump will not fit on the current page it is moved to the next page. When the printer device is closed the last page is ejected if there is text on it. The CMD_FLUSH used by DELUXE PAINT to abort raster dumps does not loose memory like the real printer device. The EXPUNGE call does not do any thing right now. Future: I plan on adding the following features in the near future: - Using my own shading table - Download raster fonts - Have a program with a control requester that allows different parameters to be changed (like font, rotation etc.). Maybe some kind of a status gauge also. - Make the device look more like the normal printer device. The device structure does not look like the normal printer device right now. I have not found this to be a problem but it seems like it might be. - Support more of the AMIGA TEXT commands like vertical motion, tab definitions, etc. I hope this is useful!!! If anyone has any other ideas or questions, I can be reached at: Chris Nicotra Integrated Systems Inc. 1456 Greenmont CT. Reston, VA 22090 (703) 471-7453 bix: nicotra Compuserve: 72466,765 -- "Truth is false and logic lost..." - Neil Peart (who at the time didn't realize he was talking about RU) lachac@topaz.rutgers.edu <--------OR--------> {seismo|ames}!rutgers!topaz!lachac
schaub@sugar.UUCP (Markus Schaub) (10/30/87)
In article <4VTpeRy00XoDzE004j@andrew.cmu.edu>, jk3n+@andrew.cmu.edu (John Stephen Kalucki) writes: > to be able to print files from the standard utilities, and not have to run > them through a special filter (but that would be ok too). I guess I am ... hi out there, all I can offer you is a program I use to print my program listings on the LaserWriter. I called it 'psc' and it supports the following. - one column printing with default or user defined font and size psc -12 -f Helvetica-Bold myfile - two column printing which looks like copying two pages onto one sheet. +------+------+ | Col1 | Col2 | I like this for listings because you get a lot of text | | | on one page. +------+------+ - select header printing, startpage and endpage. - write the postscript data to stdout or read a postscript file and just transmit it to the printer. - more, I don't even know, there's a lot of options in it. It is written in Modula-2 for M2Amiga, so the source won't be very useful to you unless you also buy the compiler (Would be a smart idea :-). Interested in the object file? (anybody?) Known problems: I used SER: to print, with the input buffering I don't care about messages coming back from the printer. But very useful and fast anyways. - Markus