On Thu, Aug 27, 1998 at 02:32:19PM -0500, Patrick Goetz wrote:
| On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, gippah wrote:
| >
| > >If the authors of Netscape wanted to make a deskjet output format and
| > >did it right, it could give you the same print quality that you've
| > >gotten used to from Windows. The same goes for any Unix application
| > >... the problem is that it needs to be done for each application.
| >
| > It's not really netscape's job to do that. In a multitasking
| > environment, the daemon that handles printer control needs to do this.
| > This is why it works so much better in windows when the daemon (driver)
| > is written for that printer specifically.
gippah is misunderstanding me.
Unix already has great printer control built in. I wasn't talking
about Netscape talking directly to the printer. I was talking about
Netscape generating the correct printing format for a certain type of
printer, which would then be sent to the printer by your printer
daemon. Currently, the only format Netscape (and many other Unix
applications) can print in is postscript.
| > Sure, you can have anything that accesses the printer do so directly.
| > Then we'd be back to where we were in the 1980's and had programs like
| > wordperfect bundled with hundreds of different printer drivers. Also
| > note that allowing this kind of hardware access would invariably break a
| > multitasking OS.
Again, gippah misunderstands me. He'd implied that it was impossible
to print without printer drivers under Windows ... I suggested that
this was wrong, and gave an example of how you'd do so. I didn't say
that you'd want to actually do this.
Actually, if you print to lpt1: under Windows, if you've captured the
port correctly it will queue your job nicely along with all the other
print jobs (but will NOT run it through the printer-specific driver,
so it's your program's job to make output that's appropriate for your
printer.)
| For the record, the X11 "Broadway" release was supposed to include support
| for printing. Then the funding from OSF dried up and - AFAIK - large
| parts of this project were abandoned. I'm not sure if either of XOpen's
| releases (6.3, 6.4) include printer support.
That's unfortunate. That could be quite useful.
| Anyway, the UNIX/linux printing system is unquestionably the achilles heel
| of these systems when they compete mano y' mano against windows for the
| desktop. Suggesting that printer control should be handled at the
| application level should get someone a nice fat bonus from M$, as this
| will have applications developers and users running, not walking, for
| windows, regardless of how bug ridden it is.
Nobody here has suggested that printer control should be done at the
application level, at least not that I've noticed.
There's two parts two printing - 1) generating something that can be
sent to the printer and 2) sending it to the printer in an orderly
manner. Both Unix and Windows do #2 very well ... but Windows has a
much better approach to #1 than Unix does.
Actually, if we could come up with really good postscript to {whatever
printer} conversion program, we could make Unix work almost as well as
Windows in this regards. Ghostscript works, but it leaves a lot to be
desired. The trick would be to :
1) fix ghostscript so that when converting PS to various printer
formats that it doesn't just generate a bitmap to be dumped to the
printer. It needs to be able to take advantage of the printer's
features, like built in fonts, the ability to move around on the page,
etc.
Postscript doesn't have to be the `internal' format, of course,
but since everything already does it, it's probably the most
practical.
2) and make it easy to add support for new printers, so easy that
printer manufacturers will start supplying a ghostscript `module'
that will take advantage of all their printer's features.
If this is done, Windows would lose a big advantage.
--
Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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