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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: impress, postscript printers
Message-ID: <1579@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-May-87 14:26:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.1579
Posted: Wed May 13 14:26:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 16-May-87 06:40:27 EDT
References: <6310@hi.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Mt. View, CA
Lines: 34

> When is someone going to make a postscript printer that sits on
> the ethernet?  As far as I know, current postscript printers
> sit on a RS232 port.  This is slowwwwwwwww.  The ONLY reason
> that we are not going to postscript is because of the large
> amounts of time required to get a job printed, especially if
> it is a bitmap.  We currently have an Imagen 8/300 which is
> about to die (just the other day we printed ~1500 pages in a
> 12 hour time period, far more than it was designed for) and
> we will have to buy another laser printer.  If there were a
> postscript printer that set on the ethernet, it would
> probably be purchased just because there are a lot more
> products that produce postscript than there are that produce
> impress.
> 
> So back to the original question, when are postscript printers
> that sit on the ethernet coming out?  
> 

When PostScript runs fast enough to justify a faster input.

Seriously, an Apple LaserWriter will bog down enough at 9600 baud to 
make higher speed inputs seem hard to justify.  The LaserWriter Plus
is faster, but even then, the limiting factor is frequently how fast
PostScript can process the input.

By the way, using a PostScript printer to put out bit mapped graphics
data is a very poor use of PostScript.  I have a program that takes
Epson MX-80 graphics data, and translates it into PostScript -- it's
really painful to watch a full page of graphics convert to PostScript
and print.  It makes more sense to figure out how to convert the data
that generated the bit map into something a little more oriented to
PostScript.

Clayton E. Cramer