On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Chris Tribo wrote:

> I thought ghostscript only spoke Postscript,

The Unix environment doesn't define a printer API on the programming level
like QuickDraw or GDI, so usually what happens is applications that want
to print generate Postscript code, since this is popular and fairly
printer-independent.  

Presumably if you, as a Unix developer, want to control the screen and the
printer with the same language, you're expected to pay the money and get
yourself Display Postscript somehow.  The Ghostscript people were at one
time rather enthusiastically promising to hook us up with a Display
Ghostscript feature, but eventually they seem to have decided to do
also-useful PDF support and inkjet drivers instead.  No one mentions it
these days.

Ghostscript will convert Postscript into any of quite a few native printer
PDL's, so it has become the de-facto ``printer driver'' on modern Unix,
even though that's only one of the things it can do.  There is a link to
their web page on the pkgsrc README for ghostscript if you want to know
more.

Setting up printing can actually be somewhat difficult, but there is a lot
of generic experience out there on the web i think. Everyone seems to have
their own pet tricks.  Many of the little programs poeple use to do their
pet tricks are in pkgsrc, too.

-- 
Miles Nordin / v:+1 720 841-8308 fax:+1 530 579-8680
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