Mark Bixby writes:

> Is PostScript capability available on inkjet printers?  When I think
>  "PostScript", I automatically think "laser" too.
>
>  Please correct me if I'm wrong (and provide printer vendor names too).
> Thanks.

The trouble is that PostScript is a graphics description language, but any
sort of printing device has to be a bit-mapped raster scan device. Thus, the
question is always, with any sort of printing, where do you render the
graphical instructions into a bitmap, in the host -- or in the printer?

In PostScript, the rendering is almost always done in the printer itself, if
the printer is of even marginal quality, thus all of the graphics load is
removed from the host computer. However, this tends to make the printer rather
expensive (it needs a fast processor and a fair amount of internal memory) --
and most people that are interested in ink-jet printers just don't want to
spend minimally $600 to $900 on an ink-jet printer.

There are ink-jet PostScript printers available, but only from a few
manufacturers, and they're all color -- and they all tend to be slower than
molasses.

The reason that standard, off-the-shelf B&W ink-jet printers can be
manufactured so cheaply is that they are about as dumb a device as they can be
made. They have only enough smarts to communicate with a host computer
(generally a PC) and to move an ink cartridge back and forth as raster scan
lines are received from the host, squirting a drop of ink wherever there is a
one and not wherever there is a zero.

If one of these minimal ink-jet printers is going to print PostScript, the
graphical language interpretation has to be done in the PC and transmitted out
to the ink-jet printer, a line at a time. That's clearly going to put some
significant load on the host PC, but if time is less of a consideration than
money, the standard reasoning goes: why pay to duplicate all of memory and
processing power in the printer that's already in the PC?

PostScript-based inkjet printers unfortunately sit in an optimization well
where they would neither be cheap enough for those people to whom cheap is
everything, nor are they of sufficiently good enough quality and speed for
those who want all of the attributes and advantages of PostScript printing.

Wirt Atmar