On 18-Nov-97 G. Kapetanios wrote: > I am thinking of bying a laser printer but I have one question. I will be > printing some large documents with lots of graphics in them. The files > will have the postscript format. For example one file I recently printed > was 6.2 Mb. The cheapest laser printer is HP 6L with 1 Mb of memory. Does > this mean I will not be able to print my files which are larger than 1 > Mb? Or doesn't it matter as long as my computer memory is large enough ? > Any hint will be appreciated. > Thanks > George
Hi George, With a PostScript printer what matters is that the printer memory is large enough to hold the information required to compose 1 page, plus any "global" PS code which the file requires. For a page consisting mainly of text which only calls for the fonts that come with the printer, the page requirement is only a few KB and there's no problem. If you have graphics, or if you're downloading the font definitions on the fly (as with TeX), then there are much greater demands on printer memory. If you have a lot of graphics, then almost certainly 1MB is not enough. 2MB is probably enough most of the time but may sometimes be inadequate. 4MB is almost certainly adequate. As a general rule, you can print PS files which are overall very big, provided you don't exceed the printer's RAM for each page. On the other hand, you can print PS on a non-PS printer provided you run a PostScript->whatever interpreter on your conputer: this generates native printer code, and all that is needed is that the printer can accomodate whatever native code is required for each page (as it should, or take it back). The computer can carry the burden of composing the page before sending the native code to the printer. One possibility is ghostscript, but this tends to suffer from font-rendering problems and can give disappointing results if you need good-looking hard copy. Hope this helps, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: Ted Harding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 18-Nov-97 Time: 12:40:17 -------------------------------------------------------------------- -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
