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From: Zanarotti@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (Stanley Zanarotti)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Re: Why I think I dislike Postscript
Message-ID: <8707301914.AA04355@brillig.umd.edu>
Date: Thu, 30-Jul-87 11:58:00 EDT
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Posted: Thu Jul 30 11:58:00 1987
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>From:  William LeFebvre <phil at RICE.EDU>
>Subject: Why I think I dislike Postscript

    >From this I assert the following claim:  what you don't get with
    >PostScript is any versatility in digitizing your own fonts.
    >...Am I right?  Is it true that the only type of font
    >description which can be given to a PostScript engine is a spline-based
    >one?

No, bitmap fonts can be downloaded using the Postscript program that
dvi2ps uses.  The theory is to define a font whose drawing procedure
looks up the bitmap in a table, and places that bitmap on the page.  The
characters that the document uses can be downloaded into this table.

    >>From: prj@pm-prj.lcs.mit.edu
    >> The lab I work in has just started converting to using PostScript
    >> printers as our standard printers.  We are now getting complaints from
    >> our TeX users about how slow printing is for them now.  Quotes range
    >> from an average of 2 pages per minute up to a max of 5 pages per minute
    >> (both on the "24 pages/minute" PS2400s).  Since this must be a common
    >> problem for other academic and research institutions....
    >
    >5 pages per minute?  I get better performance out of our Imagen 2308:
    >8 pages per minute and it isn't a PostScript engine.  From this I
    >assert the following claim:  PostScript engines are very slow.  Perhaps
    >someday in the distant future they might be running an acceptable
    >speed---when we start using 68030 processors in them and when we start
    >putting them on Ethernets (so that transmitting the very verbose
    >document description won't slow us down as much).

Since the printer in question is down the hall from my office, I can't
resist replying to this.  When I saw you were replying to Paul's
message, I hoped you were going to give some advice, not try to use our
problems as an excuse to say that Postscript is slow.

The problem has not been tracked down to the printer itself.  I would
not rule out other factors, like the dvi2ps conversion being performed
on the Microvax controlling it, from contributing to the poor performance.
I'll note that the speed of the 24-ppm printer seems to be slower
than our 8-ppm Postscript printer.  Although they're both manufactured
by QMS, it sounds like the 2400 has a poor implementation of Postscript.
You shouldn't blame a language on a poor implementation.

          -stan