Re: [Groff] PS printing - was Re: `Idot' vs. `Idotaccent'

[Miklos Somogyi]

On 11/03/2006, at 1:28 AM, Michail Vidiassov wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> let us run some survey.
> Please, tell us, how do you use groff PS output.
> Do you know how other people use it?
> Is it really in use?
> Do you use fonts supplied with groff or install your own font files?
>
> Werner is now desiding what to consider the default font set for devps.
>
>      Sincerely, Michail

Very few printers understand PDF.  In the vast majority cases they need 
to be converted to PS.
This usually happens without users noticing it.
Well, one may convert groff PS to PDF and back to PS again for 
printing, just what for?
Apart from doubling the work, you'll have big files and slow printing, 
and the
conversion may add things like a yellow background that you haven't 
asked for, scale the
page a bit here and there...

If you have a PS printer, the best thing is to send your PS file 
directly to the printer, bypassing
the system (on my Mac I use `lpr -l` to do that, even if the job does 
not show-up in the queue).

I suspect that your question was inspired by the `common knowledge' 
that PostScript is slow.
Just one extreme case to put things into perspective: a PC user 
complained about sloooow
printing at another forum. He sent me a PC generated PS file.
It did some very simple things, but needed 90s of printer cpu time.
It was some 12,000 lines long, full of absolutely unnecessary expensive 
instructions.
I wrote a 30 line program to do the same job, and it needed 0.2s cpu 
time.
If you fly from Moscow to St Petersburg via Johannesburg and Beijing, 
it takes a long time.
But you can't say that that's because the plane is slow.

Be happy that groff generates good PS code, use it as it is, whenever 
you can.

Miklos