Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-june!fred.cs.washington.edu!wjs
From: wjs@fred.cs.washington.edu (William Shipley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Grabbing Rendered PostScript bitmap
Keywords: Postscript printing rendering
Message-ID: <10854@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 24 Feb 90 11:00:26 GMT
References: <37673@cornell.UUCP>
Sender: news@cs.washington.edu
Reply-To: wjs@fred.cs.washington.edu (William Shipley)
Organization: University of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 29

I've considered writing a more general version of such a beast myself.

The way I figured it, one should create a new printer type (in the netinfo
printcap) and specify your program as a filter.  Your program would simply
create an off-screen Bitmap Object of size 8.5 * xres by 11 * yres, lock the
focus to this object, and image the postscript page by page.

This would be exceedingly easy, made even easier by the on-line source to
a program that does something much similar ("Yap!" "Excuse you.").

Once you have a bitmap, where you put it would be your business.

If someone really got clever, they'd figure out a standard way to specify
the kinds of graphic commands dot-matrix printers take, put a bunch of
popular printers into a database, and sell a product that allows one to
print PostScript to any old cheap printer (for example, a $300 imagewriter
at 144dpi).

This would be the first time PostScript would be available on dot-matrix
printers, to my knowledge.  It would also be illegal, I believe, since
I recall reading something about Adobe licensing PostScript only for use
on the monitor or the NeXT printer.

No surprise, really, considering that if someone wrote such a program
nobody would ever buy another LaserWriter, they'd just pipe all their
output through a NeXT.

-william shipley
future NeXT software engineer wannabe