which ink-jet printers is Ghostscript compatible with?

Brian Conway dogbert at clue4all.net
Wed Oct 20 15:12:03 EDT 1999


> There is nothing "evil" about removing smarts from a printer to reduce
> cost.  Provided of course...  that the protocol is open.  It's a real
> pitty because the HP 72x and other PPA printers are really nice (and cheap)
> color units.  Oh well...

I'm sure a few people out there might have varied opinions on this one. 
While it's definitely a Good Thing if the protocol is open for
development under linux, I am hardly a fan.  Companies in general are
doing this to save 20 bucks on parts and instead leave your cpu picking
up the pace with emulation, and I consider that to be a most evil
practice.  PCMCIA cards work in much the same manner, and while I
wouldn't trade the 3com card on my P100 Mandrake laptop for anything,
it's still disappointing trying to get a decent LAN download and having
to watch my cpu sucking away on the card (although yes, it is nicely
supported, and yes, they're made for convenience and there's no room for
real components).  While the case of PCMCIA cards can't be helped,
things such as winprinters and winmodems (even if the latter did have
code for linux) are a disappointment.  Sure, with more recent CPUs you
won't notice a real drain but I suppose it's more the principle of the
thing (although you'll still get that second or two freeze when
connecting up a winmodem even on a PIII-600 under win98), or you could
be running an older box, as mentioned.  In conclusion: bleh.

Brian Conway
dogbert at clue4all.net

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
                -- Henry Spencer
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