Acrobat Reader allows PDF files to be printed to virtually any printer,
PS-compatible or not. I do it all the time on our non-PS printer.
I think that Kit is referring to the ability to embed a file within an
application (e.g. MS Word) and have it print out, or to just "feed" the file
to the printer directly without any intermediary software. The example I
gave earlier was a graph in EPS format embedded in a Word document. The
graph won't print on a non-PS printer because neither the printer nor the
application can render the EPS file. That doesn't mean that EPS files cannot
be printed on non-PS printers, but you would need to have a helper
application, like Ghostscript/GSView, to render it first. Kit (I think) was
making the analogous point about PDF files. With a PS-compatible printer,
you can just send .eps and .ps and .pdf files directly to the printer and
they will print without any help from any application on the computer. For
example, even in bad, old DOS, with a PS-compatible printer, you could type
"copy filename.ps lpt3" and the file would print. In Unix, you could simply
type "lp filename.ps". I guess with a PS-compatible printer, you could do
the same with filename.pdf with no help at all from Acrobat Reader. The
printer itself does all the work of rendering the file.
Lee Sieswerda
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sayer, Bryan [SMTP:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 11:24 AM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: st: RE: Re: graphics formats
>
> PCL printers (HP) will generally print pdf files using Adobe Acrobat
> Reader
> fine. Sometimes though all the text will run together, in which case one
> needs to switch to a PS printer. Most (if not all) of the newer HP
> printers
> have both PS and PCL (6 and 5e).
>
> Bryan Sayer
> Statistician, SSS Inc.
> [email protected]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kit Baum [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 10:58 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: Re: graphics formats
>
>
> On Wednesday, Apr 2, 2003, at 02:33 US/Eastern, Lee wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately,
> > however, if you (or you publisher) do not have a PostScript compatible
> > printer, EPS/PS can not be printed. PDF is nice and there are lots of
> > EPS/PS
> > to PDF converters.
> >
> I doubt seriously that a non-PS printer will be able to do much with
> PDFs, since the PDF format can be considered a form of compressed
> PostScript. Agree that storing materials in PDF format -- if one
> properly embeds the fonts!!! -- is much preferable to sending the same
> file around in .ps format, which is much larger than optimized PDFs.
>
> Kit
>
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