Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!yale!spolsky-joel From: spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: blasting bitmaps (was Re: How did they make the printer so cheap?) Message-ID: <40784@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Date: 20 Oct 88 03:32:40 GMT References: <5807@zodiac.UUCP> <24895@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <533@gt-eedsp.UUCP> <41087@linus.UUCP> <73489@sun.uucp> <7049@ut-emx.UUCP> <25141@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Sender: root@yale.UUCP Reply-To: spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky) Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT 06520-2158 Lines: 13 I have a dumb question. Why does anybody bother to send complete bitmaps to laser printers, especially 2M bitmaps? wouldn't it be trivial to compress them for tranmission using ZLW or such? I'll bet you could get 90% compression or more for plain text. surely the time saved in transmission would pay for the compression time, especially if compression is implemented in hardware. Not to mention the savings in ethernet traffic on networks. +----------------+---------------------------------------------------+ | Joel Spolsky | bitnet: spolsky@yalecs uucp: ...!yale!spolsky | | | arpa: spolsky@yale.edu voicenet: 203-436-1483 | +----------------+---------------------------------------------------+ #include