Wirt writes:
>
> Let me disagree reasonably vigorously with Bruce on this point. There are an
> infinity of things that can be created on a PostScript printer that cannot be
> created on a PCL printer.

Wait a minute ... you can create anything you want with any printer language
that gives you the ability to address any dot on the page.  Postscript *or* PCL!


Period.


Now, Postscript may make that easier than PCL, or vice versa ... I don't
particularly care, since the main printers I use speak both.  I sometimes
run into pages that don't print correctly in Postscript, so I tell Win95
(or WinNT) to use PCL ... and vice versa!

Postscript might be supported by more printshops, graphic artists, Adobe
salespeople, whatever ... and that may be important to you ... but
it doesn't change the invalidity of the "infinity of things...that cannot
be created on a PCL printer" claim.

PostScript is a more powerful language ... but that doesn't mean you can
create things with it that you couldn't create with PCL!  It's like
comparing Java to a Turing machine.  (Any computation you can do on a modern
high speed computer with a modern language could also be done on a Turing machine ...
although it might take millions of times longer :)

BTW, it seems that PCL has one advantage over Postscript for the uninitiated:
you don't lose output.  A number of times, my printer will labor over
a page, send Postcript output to the printer, and then...poof!  The printer
throws it away, sometimes displaying an error message in the LCD panel.
With PCL, if something is screwy, a part of the output might get screwed
up, but the page never vanishes.

> Count the number of books, magazines, newspapers,
> advertisements, catalogs, etc. that are put together using PCL -- and compare
> that number to PostScript-produced documents. I know of no professionally

I remember when the same argument could be used to prove that cars from Detroit
were better than cars from Japan ... or that operating systems from Microsoft
were better than operating systems from Apple, or Be, or HP :)

Don't make the common mistake of confusing market success with superiority.
Market success means precisely and only that a product has succeeded in the market.
Nothing more.  The early adoption of the Macintosh and the Apple laser printer
(which didn't speak PCL, if I recall correctly) was a major contribution
to the success.

At one point in time, you could have easily said: the only nationally distributed
magazines produced entirely with a personal computer are done on a Commodore
Amiga, therefore it's the best computer.  (Sorry, I don't know if it was
with Postscript or PCL.)  (A few years earlier, believe it or
not, the same statement could have been made about the Commodore 64!)

> >  Even our Unix system typically drives a
> >  PostScript printer. They're much easier to set up; there's no big hassle
> >  with downloading the right driver (and as several people have pointed

Strangely, the only time I've been at a loss for an answer while setting up
a printer was during a Linux install, where I told it I was using Postscript,
and the software then asked me questions about the printer that I couldn't
answer ... which it didn't do when I said I had a PCL printer.  Other than
that one instance, I agree: it's usually easier to setup a Postscript printer.

--
Stan Sieler                                          [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.allegro.com/sieler.html