Linux Printing: Still Awful After All These Years

[Evan Leibovitch]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>> I can see that there is some attraction in having postscript built in, but
>> for this printer it's an expensive option. Having the postscript driver in
>> software does allow updates. And at the speed of modern PCs there's not
>> much incentive to offload the processing.
>>     
>
> Not all machines are fast.  And why would you ever want to add more load
> for your CPU to do.  I don't buy a fast CPU just so some cheapskate
> printer company can waste my CPU cycles doing what a $5 CPU could have
> done in the printer faster and using less power.
>   
> [...] Many laserjet printers
> worked great, some were practically indestructible (IIIP for example).
> Their postscript support has never been great though.  It usually works,
> but it is amazingly slow.  When xerox does postscript, it's fast (much
> faster than you could render it using your host CPU in most cases).
>   
I once had a Laserjet IIP (which I would put in the category of
indestructible... almost).

In my pre-Linux days I had purchased an add-on cartridge, called Pacific
Page, which plugged in where font carts went but actually added a
postscript interpreter (HP also made one). The unit I bought was part of
a kit that boosted the printer's RAM as well. It was slow but worked
very reliably, especially with TeX ('dvips' was always more advanced
than the various "dvilj" mutations). The combo survived the transition
to Linux without a hitch, but I eventually discovered that it was _far_
faster to print by removing the printer cart and using ghostscript to
drive the printer's native personality.

That was back when the main CPU was a Pentium 1. Now the overall system
load is taxed even less. IIRC the IIP's processor was a Motorola 68000
running at some single-digit MHz, and I would assume that the printer's
cartridge interface (designed mainly for font collections) wasn't
particularly fast, either.

I have no problem letting my computer's CPU do as much of the computing
as possible, leaving the printer to the physical task of laying
ink/toner on paper precisely, consistently, and inexpensively. Given the
updates to Ghostscript over the years I'm glad I didn't have to do those
as printer firmware upgrades.

- Evan

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