Printing

Duane Maxwell dmaxwell at launchpados.com
Thu Apr 8 21:44:30 UTC 1999


Ranjan Bagchi writes:
>My point is that effectively controlling printers is a tough job which
>ghostscript's been tackling for last oh.. 10 years?  I'd think that
>reinventing that particular wheel'd be something to avoid.

I would agree with the caveat that Squeak should generate something more
generic than Postscript and which can be mapped to other printer languages
as necessary.  I don't think anyone would propose that we try and drive
printers directly.

Under UNIX I'd envision a filter that converts an XML-like syntax to
Postscript, then have it fed to ghostscript.  On the Mac, a demon could be
written to detect the appearance of XML files is a special spooling
directory, then render them using Mac graphics calls into the standard
printing architecture.  Windows might, for instance, map them to WMF files
and print them.

I agree that it would be good to exploit ghostscript in the appropriate
platforms, but acknowledge that it can't be a universal solution.

===================================================
Duane Maxwell         dmaxwell (at) launchpados.com
CTO                      http://www.launchpados.com
Launchpad, Inc.                 (619) 578-8500 x226

Information contained herein is my personal opinion
    and not necessarily that of Launchpad, Inc.
===================================================





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