wjs@fred.cs.washington.edu (William Shipley) (06/17/90)
One obvious hack to do on the next is to use the built-in PostScript interpreter as a nice general printer driver; for example allowing one to hook up dot matrix or non-postscript lasers and do the PS imaging on the NeXT. Unfortunately, in the March 1990 NextAnswers, under postscript.312, they explicitly say: >The Adobe/NeXT licensing agreement says that you can only print images at >resolutions greater than 150dpi on (ONLY on) the NeXT printer. This allows >us to create 92dpi bitmaps in our window server and print them, but not >300 or 400dpi bitmaps (This is on page 6 of the license shipped with 1.0). Bummer deal. Assumedly, Adobe would sue anybody who tried to market a product that dumped PS to arbitrary printers. (All isn't lost, tho, because my AppleWriter is only 144dpi, so I could use it. Weee!) Actually, it's an interesting issue whether they can sue you for selling software that could be used to violate their licensing agreement, or whether they'd have to sue the users who bought the software and prove they actually used it. I love lawyers. -william shipley
jasmerb@mist.cs.orst.edu (Bryce Jasmer) (06/17/90)
In article <12281@june.cs.washington.edu> wjs@fred.cs.washington.edu (William Shipley) writes: >(All isn't lost, tho, because >my AppleWriter is only 144dpi, so I could use it. Weee!) I believe that Jiro (author of Cassandra) is working on this and might even have something complete. I think he is going to name it RIP (raster image processor) and it would allow you to print postscript to your Imagewriter. That is about all I know so you will have to ask him for more details. I don't know is email or US mail address (or Japan address for that matter) since I am not sitting at my cube, but check out Cassandra for how to get a hold of him. Bryce Jasmer jasmerb@cs.orst.edu
jiro@heights.cit.cornell.edu (06/17/90)
In article <18947@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> jasmerb@mist.UUCP (Bryce Jasmer) writes: >I believe that Jiro (author of Cassandra) is working on this and might even >have something complete. I think he is going to name it RIP (raster image >processor) and it would allow you to print postscript to your Imagewriter. >That is about all I know so you will have to ask him for more details. Well, I had e-mailed the original author since my USENET connection had been weak, but it seems ok now, so here is my reply. yes, I ahve been working on RIP! DMP for the last two months or slow. Development has stopped due to the fact that I am away from my NeXT rigth now. It will continue again in the Fall. The answer is "yes it is posssible." NeXT's lawyers don't want you to go above 150 dpi. The argument that whether or not you can try to get around this is mooot and would put you and your clients in BIG trouble. I have written the alpha prototype of RIP! DMP onto Draw producing RIP! Draw. It produces 72 dpi output and 4 true grey levels at PRGB (Printer Ribbon GOes Bad) quality. I could raise this to 144, but it doesn't seem worth the effort since 72 dpi is fine for DPMP output. The printers it supports are the Apple Imagewriter and Epson LX series. The beta might take a while. The problem is as follows. Making it a standalone frontend that accepts postscript and then dumps the bitimage to Serial A is easy (that's what Rip! Draw does). But making a transparent filter that gets piped through when lpr runs is a bit more difficult. The problem is that lpr only likes 7 bits. There must be some flag somewhere but i haven't had time to look for it. In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if some commercial venture hasn't already started on this. - Jiro nakamura ps. Wherever I am in the world, heights will forward my mail to me. pps. Sorry for the typos, the transpacific line is great, but doesn't have much bandwidth. ppps. Obviously I have not said all I know. I am under some restrictions both from NeXT and myself. Sorry. :-( -- Jiro Nakamura jiro@heights.cit.cornell.edu (usually) Independent NeXT Developer ac6y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (unusually) 493 Ellis Hollow Crk. Rd. jiro (BIX) Ithaca NY, 14850 Tel: (607) 253-0691 Fax: (607) 253-8525