On Lu, 23 iul 12, 18:05:45, Brian wrote:
>
> All the major applications on the popular DEs are now geared up to
> output in PDF format when printing.

PDF is kind of a subset of PostScript
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#PostScript

Kind regards,
Andrei
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On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 18:02:11 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Lu, 23 iul 12, 18:05:45, Brian wrote:
> >
> > All the major applications on the popular DEs are now geared up to
> > output in PDF format when printing.
>
> PDF is kind of a subset of PostScript
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#PostScript

An interesting perspective but how does that connect with the assertion
that

> . . . Linux applications generally output Postscript when printing. ?

I'll rephrase what I said previously:

No major application on the popular DEs outputs PostScript when printing.


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On Mi, 25 iul 12, 21:18:19, Brian wrote:
> On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 18:02:11 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>
> > On Lu, 23 iul 12, 18:05:45, Brian wrote:
> > >
> > > All the major applications on the popular DEs are now geared up to
> > > output in PDF format when printing.
> >
> > PDF is kind of a subset of PostScript
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#PostScript
>
> An interesting perspective but how does that connect with the assertion
> that
>
> > . . . Linux applications generally output Postscript when printing. ?
>
> I'll rephrase what I said previously:
>
> No major application on the popular DEs outputs PostScript when printing.

I was trying to point out that a PS printer is also a PDF printer.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 23:23:14 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Mi, 25 iul 12, 21:18:19, Brian wrote:
> > On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 18:02:11 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> >
> > > On Lu, 23 iul 12, 18:05:45, Brian wrote:
> > > >
> > > > All the major applications on the popular DEs are now geared up to
> > > > output in PDF format when printing.
> > >
> > > PDF is kind of a subset of PostScript
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#PostScript
> >
> > An interesting perspective but how does that connect with the assertion
> > that
> >
> > > . . . Linux applications generally output Postscript when printing. ?
> >
> > I'll rephrase what I said previously:
> >
> > No major application on the popular DEs outputs PostScript when printing.
>
> I was trying to point out that a PS printer is also a PDF printer.

Are you using the word 'printer' to refer to the actual physical machine
which does the printing or are you using it as a shorthand for 'printer
queue' or 'print queue'?


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Le mercredi 25 juillet 2012 à 21:34 +0100, Brian a écrit :
> On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 23:23:14 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>
> > On Mi, 25 iul 12, 21:18:19, Brian wrote:
> > > On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 18:02:11 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Lu, 23 iul 12, 18:05:45, Brian wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > All the major applications on the popular DEs are now geared up to
> > > > > output in PDF format when printing.
> > > >
> > > > PDF is kind of a subset of PostScript
> > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#PostScript
> > >
> > > An interesting perspective but how does that connect with the assertion
> > > that
> > >
> > > > . . . Linux applications generally output Postscript when printing. ?
> > >
> > > I'll rephrase what I said previously:
> > >
> > > No major application on the popular DEs outputs PostScript when printing.
> >
> > I was trying to point out that a PS printer is also a PDF printer.
>
> Are you using the word 'printer' to refer to the actual physical machine
> which does the printing or are you using it as a shorthand for 'printer
> queue' or 'print queue'?
>
>
I might have totally missed the point: I am by no way a printer* guru,
but I have yet to see someone do a
cat file.ps > /dev/lpr0 (or whatever)
to print a file.

What the guy wanted was just to be sure that in 5-10 years, his printer
would still work even if the blobs were not to be released anymore.

Three goods points were raised:
1) Postscript printers (advertised so) are great in that regard because
they only need a PPD (ASCII) file to work. This is not the only way to
be sure the printer will work in 10 years but this is the easiest (BTW,
I have never heard of someone complaining because some binary blobs for
his printer were not available anymore...).
2) Even with open source drivers, you cannot control the firmware of the
printer: some printers are programmed to force you to visit your
reseller once in a while for "maintenance" or just stop working.
3) CUPS is most certainly what will be used to manage the queue and talk
to the printer. CUPS will translate everything that is sent to it to
some dialect the printer can understand.

Am I wrong somewhere? Did I overlooked something important here?


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On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:23:14 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Mi, 25 iul 12, 21:18:19, Brian wrote:
>> On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 18:02:11 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>>
>> > On Lu, 23 iul 12, 18:05:45, Brian wrote:
>> > >
>> > > All the major applications on the popular DEs are now geared up to
>> > > output in PDF format when printing.
>> >
>> > PDF is kind of a subset of PostScript
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf#PostScript
>>
>> An interesting perspective but how does that connect with the assertion
>> that
>>
>> > . . . Linux applications generally output Postscript when printing. ?
>>
>> I'll rephrase what I said previously:
>>
>> No major application on the popular DEs outputs PostScript when
>> printing.
>
> I was trying to point out that a PS printer is also a PDF printer.

And better than PDF, I'd say.

PostScript specification is by far a more professionally-oriented
language that PDF format (aside comment: last time I checked you could
embed a 3D video animation on a PDF sheet and all kind of
"dynamicallities"... geez!).

Sadly, I can guess the why of this moving¹ :-(

***
Note: While PostScript is currently the defacto-standard print job file
format/language for UNIX-based applications, it is slowly being phased
out in favor of Adobe's Portable Document Format ("PDF") which offers
many advantages over PostScript. *Mac OS X uses PDF as the primary print
job file format* and Linux is making the transition. Both PostScript and
PDF are complex formats, and we highly recommend using high-level
toolkits whenever possible to create your print jobs.
***

Hint: *bolded text* is mine.

¹http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.5/spec-postscript.html

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 02:39:29PM +0000, Camaleón wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:23:14 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> >>
> >> No major application on the popular DEs outputs PostScript when
> >> printing.
> >
> > I was trying to point out that a PS printer is also a PDF printer.
>
> And better than PDF, I'd say.
>
> PostScript specification is by far a more professionally-oriented
> language that PDF format (aside comment: last time I checked you could
> embed a 3D video animation on a PDF sheet and all kind of
> "dynamicallities"... geez!).

No, while PDF does perhaps allow such things, it's far far better than
PostScript.

PostScript is difficult to process due to the fact that it's a fully-
featured Turing-complete language. It's difficult to parse to find
page boundaries since you have to process the whole document to be
sure. There are standards to mark up the PostScript to make this
simpler, but they are optional and can be wrong. Processing it can
have unbounded complexity.

PDF is a subset of PostScript and does not have a Turing-complete
grammar. It means it's possible to process it very fast, and it
has structure which PostScript does not. For example, selecting a
subset of pages is very fast, and doesn't require processing all the
pages in the whole file to extract a few pages. So things like page
subsetting, rescaling, n-up printing, etc. become trivial. Also,
take a simple task like copying some text out of a PDF; it's easy,
because it has a higher-level structure than PostScript. Doing it
with PostScript is decidedly non-trivial. Not only do you have to
find the text (which might be printed letter by letter), you also have
to deal with font subsetting and encoding issues. It might even be
bitmaps.

PDF is also a superset in other areas. For example, it has support
for transparency, gradients (including meshes) and other advanced
drawing and rendering which PostScript can't support. If you print
this as PostScript, it has to approximate the transparency, gradients
etc. with thousands of smaller objects, and the file size can balloon
to tens of times its original size (I've had multi-gigabyte PostScript
files generated from tens to hundreds of megabyte PDFs). Being able to
print natively as PDF means you can just transfer the PDF and avoid
such lossy conversion. It also supports colour profiles for accurate
colour reproduction. A native PDF workflow is far, far better and
vastly more flexible than a native PostScript workflow.

PDF/A is normally used for printing--it's the sensible subset without
all the pointless bells and whistles. PDF is the successor to
PostScript, which eliminates the mistakes of the format (being fully
programmable, and lacking in many modern features), while adding a
few of its own (stupid additional features). Ignore those extra
features, and it's a much, much better solution than PostScript.


Regards,
Roger

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: :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
`. `' schroot and sbuild http://alioth.debian.org/projects/buildd-tools
`- GPG Public Key F33D 281D 470A B443 6756 147C 07B3 C8BC 4083 E800


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On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:27:26 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 02:39:29PM +0000, Camaleón wrote:
>> On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:23:14 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>> >>
>> >> No major application on the popular DEs outputs PostScript when
>> >> printing.
>> >
>> > I was trying to point out that a PS printer is also a PDF printer.
>>
>> And better than PDF, I'd say.
>>
>> PostScript specification is by far a more professionally-oriented
>> language that PDF format (aside comment: last time I checked you could
>> embed a 3D video animation on a PDF sheet and all kind of
>> "dynamicallities"... geez!).
>
> No, while PDF does perhaps allow such things, it's far far better than
> PostScript.

(...)

PostScript is a languge for machines not for human beings. It does not
have to be "easy" but "accurate". One only have to read the full
specification manual of both to start guessing "why" (hint: one of them
has around 200 less pages) :-)

(note that I don't want my printer to "read" but "interpret" the document
I am sending it exactly "as is" and PS complexity is precisely for doing
so)

> PDF/A is normally used for printing--it's the sensible subset without
> all the pointless bells and whistles. PDF is the successor to
> PostScript, which eliminates the mistakes of the format (being fully
> programmable, and lacking in many modern features), while adding a few
> of its own (stupid additional features). Ignore those extra features,
> and it's a much, much better solution than PostScript.

You say "successor", I read "simplification" and simplifying has always
its drawbacks and lots of backward incompatibilities.

Sorry, but my reluctancy is because PDF was born for a completely
different work (mainly presentation and document [compa|porta]tibility),
not to be editable nor for printer machines. If PDF wants to become a
valid successor of PS it will have to pass the usual ~10 years to proof
its validity in the real world >:-)

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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On Thu 26 Jul 2012 at 13:03:32 +0200, Gaël DONVAL wrote:

> Le mercredi 25 juillet 2012 à 21:34 +0100, Brian a écrit :
> > On Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 23:23:14 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > >
> > > I was trying to point out that a PS printer is also a PDF printer.
> >
> > Are you using the word 'printer' to refer to the actual physical machine
> > which does the printing or are you using it as a shorthand for 'printer
> > queue' or 'print queue'?
> >
> I might have totally missed the point: I am by no way a printer* guru,
> but I have yet to see someone do a cat file.ps > /dev/lpr0 (or
> whatever) to print a file.

I'll take the 'whatever'.

lp -d <print_queue> -o raw test.ps

goes to the printer (the machine) without any filtering and gives a nice
printout if the machine understands PostScript.

lp -d <print_queue> -o raw test.pdf

also does the same but the printout will not please you unless the
machine has a PDF interpreter.

>From this you might conclude a PS printer is not necessarily a PDF
printer.

There are two meanings in common usage attached to the word 'printer'.
Using the second one may lead to a different conclusion,


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On Thu 26 Jul 2012 at 17:10:12 +0000, Camaleón wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:27:26 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
>
> > No, while PDF does perhaps allow such things, it's far far better than
> > PostScript.
>
> (...)
>
> PostScript is a languge for machines not for human beings. It does not
> have to be "easy" but "accurate". One only have to read the full
> specification manual of both to start guessing "why" (hint: one of them
> has around 200 less pages) :-)
>
> (note that I don't want my printer to "read" but "interpret" the document
> I am sending it exactly "as is" and PS complexity is precisely for doing
> so)

Roger Leigh gave a good explanation of the role played by PDF in the
CUPS printing process on Debian. You snipped most of it, including this:

> A native PDF workflow is far, far better and vastly more
> flexible than a native PostScript workflow.

To understand its importance you need a better reference than the one
given to a page on the cups website a few posts back. For example, there
is:

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/pdfasstandardprintjobformat

To illustrate the difference between printing in the olden days and now
we'll take someone who has set up a print queue to send a job to a
printer as PostScript. A text file is sent to CUPS, which filters it.

On Lenny: text --> texttops --> pstops ----> printer

On Squeeze: text --> texttopdf --> pdftopdf --> pdftops ----> printer

Note that the printer still gets PostScript (which should make you
happy) and the advantages of the PDF workflow which have been described
occur at the pdftopdf filtering stage.


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