Fresh Fish 4

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Fresh Fish 4 / FreshFish_May-June1994.bin / bbs / gnu / gs-2.6.1.4-src.lha / src / amiga / ghostscript-2.6.1 / devices.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-01-28 | 13.6 KB | 361 lines

Copyright (C) 1992, 1993 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved. This file is part of Ghostscript. Ghostscript is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. No author or distributor accepts responsibility to anyone for the consequences of using it or for whether it serves any particular purpose or works at all, unless he says so in writing. Refer to the Ghostscript General Public License for full details. Everyone is granted permission to copy, modify and redistribute Ghostscript, but only under the conditions described in the Ghostscript General Public License. A copy of this license is supposed to have been given to you along with Ghostscript so you can know your rights and responsibilities. It should be in a file named COPYING. Among other things, the copyright notice and this notice must be preserved on all copies. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - This file, devices.doc, gives more detailed documentation about certain specific devices for which Ghostscript can produce output. For an overview of Ghostscript and a list of the documentation files, see README. Devices for which this file currently contains documentation: SPARCprinter HP DeskJet 500C & 550C HP PaintJet, XL, and XL300 DEC LJ250 Apple Dot Matrix Printer (and Imagewriter) ### ------------------------- The SPARCprinter ------------------------- ### This section was written by Martin Schulte. Introduction ------------ The SPARCprinter is is connected to SPARCStation via a special SBUS card's video inferface, the picture is composed on the host and only a bitmap is send to the printer unit. Together with a SPARCprinter, you always buy (as far as I know) software that enables you to do postscript-printing on your SPARCPrinter. So, the need for a Ghostscript-Interface to the SPARCPrinter seems low, but on the other hand some Postscript drawings are not correctly printed with SUN's software: on some pages occured a thin vertical line of rubbish (reproducable), on some Mathematica drawings the text at the axes wasn't rotated. I tried all of these with Ghostscript and always got the expected results. However, replacing proprietary software should never be a bad idea. The problem is that there has yet been no effort to make the SPARCPrinter- driver behave like a BSD output-filter, I made my tests using the script mentioned under Installation. Installation ------------ Add sparc.dev to DEVICE_DEVS and compile ghostscript as described in make.doc. Afterwards, you can use the following script (the way of handling standard input versus filename-arguments doesn't look very clever, has anyone a better idea ?) to print if you substitute <GSPATH> by the place where you installed the ghostscript binary: outcmd1='/vol/local/lib/troff2/psxlate -r' outcmd2='<GSPATH> -I/home/schulte/gs252 -sDEVICE=sparc -sOUTPUTFILE=/dev/lpvi0 -' if [ $# -eq 0 ] then $outcmd1 | $outcmd2 else cat $* | $outcmd1 | $outcmd2 fi Problems -------- Since /dev/lpvi can only be opened for exclusive use, another job having opened it (engine_ctl_sparc or another ghostscript as the most probable canidates) will cause to stop ghostscript with "Error: /invalidfileaccess in --.outputpage--" In case of common printer problems like out of paper, a warning describing the reason will be printed to stdout, the driver will try to access again and again each five seconds. Due to a problem with the device-driver (in the kernel) the reason of printer failure is not always correctly reported to program. This is the case at least if you open the top cover (Error in the display: E5). Look to the display at the printer if a "Printer problem with unknown reason" is reported. Fatal errors will cause the print-job to be terminated. ### ------------------------------ End --------------------------------- ### ### ------------------- H-P color inkjet printers ---------------------- ### ### (DeskJet 500C, DeskJet 550C, PaintJet, PaintJet XL, PaintJet XL300 ### ### and the DEC LJ250 which can operate in a Paintjet-compatiblme mode) ### This section was written by George Cameron. Information and tips on usage for the drivers contained in gdevcdj.c ==================================================================== OVERVIEW: There are 6 generic drivers contained in the source module: 1 - cdj500: HP DeskJet 500C 2 - cdj550: HP DeskJet 550C 3 - pjxl300: HP PaintJet XL300 4 - pjtest: HP PaintJet 5 - pjxltest: HP PaintJet XL 6 - declj250: DEC LJ250 All of these drivers have 8-bit (monochrome), 16-bit and 24-bit (colour) and for the DJ 550C 32-bit, (colour, cmyk mode) options in addition to standard colour and mono drivers. It is also possible to set various printer-specific parameters from the gs command line, eg. gs -sDEVICE=cdeskjet -sBitsPerPixel=16 -dDepletion=1 -dShingling=2 tiger.ps NB/ The old names cdeskjet, cdjcolor and cdjmono drivers have been retained; however, their functionality duplicates that available using the above drivers (and cdeskjet is identical to cdj500), ie. we can use: gs -sDEVICE=cdj500 -dBitsPerPixel=24 ... for cdjcolor, and gs -sDEVICE=cdj500 -dBitsPerPixel=1 ... for cdjmono DEFAULT PAPER SIZE: If the preprocessor symbol A4 is defined, the default paper size is the European A4 size; otherwise it is the U.S. letter size (8.5"x11"). Other paper sizes (including A3 for the PaintJet XL and PaintJet XL300) may be specified on the command line as explained in the Ghostscript documentation. DEFAULT BITS-PER-PIXEL: If the preprocessor symbol BITSPERPIXEL is defined as an integer (see below for the range of allowable values), this number will be used to define the default bits-per-pixel (ie. bit depth) for the generic drivers. If the symbol is not defined, the default is set to 24 bits per pixel. It is of course still possible to specify the value from the command line, as described below. Note also that the cdeskjet, cdjcolor and cdjmono drivers are unaffected by setting this symbol, as their default settings are predefined to be 1, 3 and 24 respectively. DESKJET PHYSICAL LIMITS: Maximum printing width = 2400 dots = 8". The printer manuals say that the maximum recommended printing height on the page is 10.3", but since this is obviously not true for A4 paper, and I have been unable to detect any problems in printing longer page lengths, this would seem to be a rather artificial restriction. All Deskjets have 1/2" unprintable bottom margin, due to the mechanical arrangement used to grab the paper. Side margins are approximately 0.25" for US Letter paper, and 0.15" for A4. COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS: Several printer 'properties' have been implemented for these printers. Those available so far are all integer quantities, and thus may be specified as eg. gs -dBitsPerPixel=32 -dShingling-1 ... which sets the BitsPerPixel parameter to 32 and the Shingling parameter to 1. BITS-PER-PIXEL: All of the drivers in gdevcdj.c accept a command line option to set the BitsPerPixel property. This gives considerable flexibility in choosing various trade-offs between speed/quality/colour etc. The valid numbers are: 1: This is a standard Ghostscript monochrome driver, and uses black ink (by installing the separate mono cartridge in the case of the DeskJet 500C, or automatically for the other printers) 3: A standard Ghostscript colour driver, using internal dithering. This is fast to compute and to print, but the clustered dithering can lose some detail and colour fidelity. 8: An 'error-diffusion' monochrome driver which uses Floyd-Steinberg dithering to print greyscale images. The patterns are much more randomised than with the normal clustered dithering, but the data files can be much larger and somewhat slower to print. 16: This is a 'cheaper' version of the following (24-bit) driver, which generates a Floyd-Steinberg colour dithered output using the minimum amount of memory (this may be helpful when using IBM PC's when Ghostscript has not been compiled using a 32-bit 386-style compiler). The quality can be almost as good as the 24-bit version. 24: A high-quality colour driver using Floyd-Steinberg dithering for maximum detail and colour range. However it is very memory intensive and thus can be slow to compute (and it tends to produce rather larger raw data files, so they can also be slower to print). 32: This is for the DeskJet 550C only, which uses the black cartridge and the colour cartridge simultaneously (ie. CMYK printing). This printer can be both faster and give higher quality than the DeskJet 500C, because of the true black ink. (Note that the 24-bit mode also permits CMYK printing on this printer, and uses less memory. Any differences between 24-bit and 32-bit should be very small.) DESKJET PROPERTIES: The addional properties available for the DeskJets are: BlackCorrect (int) /* Colour correction to give * better blacks when using the DJ500C * in colour mode, eg. the default of 4 * reduces the cyan component to 4/5 * Range accepted: 0 - 9 (0 = none) */ Shingling (int) /* Interlaced, multi-pass printing * 0 = none, 1 = 50%, 2 = 25%, 2 is * best & slowest */ Depletion (int) /* 'Intelligent' dot-removal * 0 = none, 1 = 25%, 2 = 50%, 1 best * for graphics? * Use 0 for transparencies */ PAINTJET XL300/PAINTJET XL PROPERTIES: PrintQuality (int) /* Mechanical print quality * -1 = fast, 0 = normal, 1 = presentation * Fast mode reduces ink usage and uses * single-pass operation for some media * types. Presentation uses more ink and * max number of passes, ie. slowest * printing for highest quality */ RenderType (int) /* 0 = driver does dithering * 1 = snap to primaries * 2 = snap black -> white, others to black * 3 = ordered dither * 4 = error diffusion * 5 = monochrome ordered dither * 6 = monochrome error diffusion * 7 = cluster ordered dither * 8 = monochrome cluster ordered dither * 9 = user-defined dither (not supported) * 10 = monochrome user-defined dither ns. */ PAINTJET PROPERTIES: No additional properties GAMMA CORRECTION: One consequence of using Floyd-Steinberg dithering rather than Ghostscript's default clustered ordered dither is that it is much more obvious that the ink dots are rather larger on the page than their nominal 1/180" or 1/300" size (clustering the dots tends to minimise this effect). Thus it is often the case that the printed result is rather too dark. A simple empirical correction for this may be achieved by preceding the actual postscript file to be printed by a short file which effectively sets the gamma for the device, eg. gs ... gamma.ps colorpic.ps quit.ps where gamma.ps is %! {0.333 exp} dup dup currenttransfer setcolortransfer This example sets the gamma for r, g, and b to 3, which seems to work reasonably well in practice. GENERAL TIPS: For all the above printers, the paper is critically important to the final results. Smoother, less fibrous paper is generally better (and suggested types are given in the printer manuals). In particular, the special ink-jet paper can make a big difference; the colours are brighter, but most importantly, there is almost no colour bleed, even with adjacent areas of very heavy inking. Similarly, the special coated transparencies also work well (and ordinary transparencies do not work at all!) The unix-lpr.sh provides one example of setting up a multi-option colour postscript lpr queue on Unix systems, and includes the ability to choose a range of different colour options and printer accounting and error logging. CAVEAT EMPTOR!: It is not always easy for me to test all of these drivers, as the only colour printer I have here is the DeskJet 500C. I rely on others testing drivers for the additional machines and reporting their findings back to me. ### ------------------------------ End --------------------------------- ### ### ------------------- Apple Dot Matrix Printer ---------------------- ### This section was written by Mark Wedel. The Dot Matrix Driver (DMP) driver is a simple driver I wrote. It could more more efficient, but it seems to print the images fine. The Dot Matrix Printer was a parallel predecessor to the Imagewriter printer. As far as I know, the Imagewriter commands are a superset to those of the Dot Matrix printer, so the driver should work fine at generating output that can be printed on Imagewriters. A few notes (from the gdevadmp.c file): * To print out images, it sets the printer for unidirection printing * and 15 cpi (120 dpi). IT sets line feed to 1/9 of an inch (72 dpi). * When finished, it sets things back to bidirection print, 1/8" line * feeds, and 12 cpi. There does not appear to be a way to reset * things to initial values. * * This code does not set for 8 bit characters (which is required). It * also assumes that carriage return/newline is needed, and not just * carriage return. These are all switch settings on the DMP, and * I have configured them for 8 bit data and cr only. * * You can search for the strings Init and Reset (in devdemp.c) to find the * strings that set up the printer and clear things when finished, and change * them to meet your needs. * * Also, you need to make sure that the printer daemon (assuming unix) * doesn't change the data as it is being printed. I have set my * printcap file (sunos 4.1.1) with the string: * ms=pass8,-opost * and it works fine. Mark Wedel master@cats.ucsc.edu ### ------------------------------ End --------------------------------- ###