CODEWITHSUNDEEP
printinglifecycleghostscriptpostscript
Kiran Rajmohan
Kiran Rajmohan

Reputation: 43

Postscript ghostscript output

This might sound like a very foolish question but I've been reading around and haven't been able to understand the lifecycle of a print job.

Program → PostScript → GhostScript → ? → Printer

My doubt is, what ( if any ) comes in the place of ? ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 878

Answers (3)

Fred F
Fred F

Reputation: 1047

If you want to go the ghostscript route, the question mark would be filled in with "gsprint" which is part of the "gsview" package.

gsview allows postscipt files to be viewed with ghostscipt, where gsprint allows postscript files to be sent to a printer with ghostscript.

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/index.htm

Then to create a windows printer to be able to send the postscript output to, which would then run gsprint and output to a printer, you need "redmon".

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/index.htm

Upvotes: 1

KenS
KenS

Reputation: 31207

To be honest, in general Ghostscript isn't in that loop at all, though it depends very much on your printer and operating system.

In general you would send PostScript directly to the printer, which would have a PostScript interpreter built in. If you don't have a PostScript printer, then you would (normally) produce some other page description language (eg HP PCL) and send that to the printer.

However (expanding slightly on what george said above) on Unix systems you may be using CUPS (Common Unix Printing System), which does use Ghostscript to render PostScript to a raster format (CUPS raster) for non-PostScript printers. The CUPS printer drivers repackage the raster into a form suitable for the specific printer.

Note that modern versions of CUPS use PDF as an intermediate format and so Ghostscript may be involved twice, once to create a PDF from the PostScript, and once to render a PDF to raster (or indeed, to convert it back to PostScript.....)

Also, there is the gsprint application, which works on Windows, it uses Ghostscript to render a bitmap which is written to a printer canvas and then using GDI calls printed to the printer using the Windows printer driver.

Upvotes: 2

luser droog
luser droog

Reputation: 19514

Your OS printer driver would fit in that spot. It receives the rendered output from ghostscript and converts it to a printer-specific format.

Upvotes: 0

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