Re: [OT] Printer with or without Postscript

[Andrew Bernard]

Hi Philippe,

It is of virtually zero concern nowadays. Whatever page description language 
your printer uses internally, the printer driver software on your computer will 
convert your file to that language format and print it. The drivers are quite 
sophisticated nowadays. It would be very hard to determine from looking at an 
average printed page with the naked eye whether the printer used Postscript or 
not. Some people claim they can tell, but for music engraving, with a good 
printer, I doubt it.

In the old days a program would produce Postscript output, and send it direct 
to the printer which would render it, having a Postscript interpreter raster 
image processor (RIP) chip built in (the chip being how Adobe made a great deal 
of money). Worked fine. Commercial shops used to have 19 inch racks of RIP’s to 
do colour separations. Now, it is all a lot simpler from the end user point of 
view.

Postscript itself is still highly relevant, PDF is essentially a  Postscript 
description, and lilypond can generate postscript, which is rendered wth 
Ghostscript - a software RIP. Postscript is by no means obsolete. Just don’t go 
concerning yourself too much trawling through printer technical specifications 
to find one that speaks Postscript to print music.

I remember programming Postscript directly to an Apple Laserwriter using a 
serial cable. (Remember serial cables?). Fun. Now you can do the same with 
Ghostscript, and save a lot of paper!

Andrew




> On 13 Oct 2015, at 07:29, flup2 <address@hidden> wrote:

> Until now, I always had Postscript laser printers. My printer is now out of
> order, and I would like to know if there is still such a huge difference
> between music scores printed with printers including postscript language,
> and printers without this option (PCL5, proprietary languages, etc.).