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Date:      Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:16:11 -0700
From:      Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com>
To:        FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS
Message-ID:  <3A137268-A771-432A-814C-E7B8CA491F69@mac.com>
In-Reply-To: <20111027133905.34315b83@scorpio>
References:  <15996.1319704110@tristatelogic.com> <1319712142.89939.YahooMailNeo@web36507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20111027172944.75a96733.freebsd@edvax.de> <4EA989C2.6060909@infracaninophile.co.uk> <20111027133905.34315b83@scorpio>

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On Oct 27, 2011, at 10:39 AM, Jerry wrote:
> Printing under MS Windows is a breeze. The *nix community has never
> gotten printing up to that lever.

Of course Unix has had functional printing; the issue is mostly dumb printers which can't accept PostScript or at least PCL, and need an OS-specific driver to rasterize for the device.  A secondary problem is X11's imaging model with the dichotomy between on-screen imaging and print imaging.

For examples of Unix printing done right, look back to NEXTSTEP twenty years ago, using Display Postscript and Pantone colorimetry to provide true WYSIWYG; also, Sun's NEWS and OpenWindows also had the DPS extension to X.  Most of that technology is still around under MacOS X, although DPS has largely been replaced by a PDF imaging model instead.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck




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