chap@art-sy.detroit.mi.us (j chapman flack) (05/17/91)
It seems to me that it should not be impossible to take a PostScript interpreter, like ghostscript, or Crispin Goswell's `postscript', or xps, or some other net.postscript floating around, and modify it to produce output for an inexpensive printer that can handle bitmapped graphics. From a cursory look at `postscript', it seems like this would involve changing the "viewer" process, which is supposed to create a bitmap representation of the page based on a fairly simple set of rasterop commands it receives from the interpreter end, which does all the real work. So the viewer should be able to take the final bitmap and band it into what- ever 8-pixel-per-byte or other format the printer uses and create a file with the appropriate control sequences to send it to the printer. Or the viewer could be modified to create a fairly standard bitmap-format file, like TIFF, say, and let people post-process THAT for their favorite printers. Combined with a printer like the Canon BJ-10e (360x360dpi, < $350), that would be a heck of a PostScript printer. Not fast, but at a price like that, just buy five to increase the throughput. :-) And I wouldn't be surprised if the interpreter could be automatically invoked as an "output filter" under the SysV spooling system. Has anyone worked / is anyone working on such a project? I have a BJ-10e, so that's where my main interest is, but anyone who has done the same for any printer has probably done most of the work. Would anybody like to collaborate on such a project? -- Chap Flack Their tanks will rust. Our songs will last. chap@art-sy.detroit.mi.us -MIKHS 0EODWPAKHS Nothing I say represents Appropriate Roles for Technology unless I say it does.