RE: The printing work has been merged

["Bastian, Waldo" <waldo bastian intel com>]

Sebastian Rittau wrote:
>Am Montag, den 27.03.2006, 17:26 +0200 schrieb Alexander Larsson:
>
>> > I have a question about generating postscript. Using
>> > copy/paste method I implemented postscript print backend,
>> > and it's working fine. While generated postscript is just
>> > a bunch of page images due to cairo problems, the GtkPrint*
>> > stuff works fine. So, shouldn't PDF backend be really a
>> > "File" backend which can write PDF or PS? Or maybe just
>> > separate PS  backend, in addition to PDF?
>>
>> Do we want to expose a write-to-ps to everyone? PDFs are a well known
>> way to send pre-rendered page layouts as files, but postscript is
much
>> less widely known.
>
>Two points to consider:
>
>      * PostScript is the standard output format in the natural
sciences
>        and mathematics community. (Probably due to the prominence of
>        LaTeX and dvips.) Also, since it's understood by many
>        (semi-)professional printers it is often used for production of
>        papers and preprints or as an intermediate format. On the other
>        hand the only applications that would fit into this category
are
>        probably word processors, so general PostScript support is not
>        necessarily needed.
>      * PDF and PostScript have a slightly different application, in my
>        opinion. PDF is used for "web publishing", i.e. stuff that's to
>        be read online, but can also be printed out. It has lots of
>        features that don't make sense on paper (links or automatic
>        table of contents, for example). PS on the other hand is the
>        lingua franca for communication with printers (the hardware
>        kind). If you've got something as PS on Linux you can print it,
>        transform it, do all kinds of silly stuff that falls into the
>        "print preparation" category. It's a format very well suited
for
>        a (printer independent) "Print to file" option.
>
> - Sebastian

Printer manufacturers have been moving from PostScript to PDF over the
last few years. At the Linux Printing summit next month one of the
agenda points will be the transition from postscript to PDF as the
primary format used by the Linux printing infrastructure. I'm sure
postscript will remain supported for some time to come, but it's
definitly on its way out.

Waldo Bastian
Linux Client Architect - Channel Platform Solutions Group
Intel Corporation - http://www.intel.com/go/linux
OSDL DTL Tech Board Chairman