Re: Example ConTeXt document: PS output

[Michael Talbot-Wilson <mtw@view.net.au>]

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On Sun, 11 Jul 2010, Martin Schröder wrote:

> 2010/7/10 Mojca Miklavec <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com>:
>> avoiding PDF for all costs makes sense or not. Expressed in other
>> words: what usually happens when one sends PDF to PostScript printer?
>> Does it print the document almost-natively or not?
>
> Typically your viewer (e.g. Adobe Reader) or your printing system
> (e.g. CUPS) converts it to PostScript.
>
> Or your printer has a PDF RIP (rare). Then there are two
> possibilities:
> - the PDF RIP converts the PDF to PostScript and feeds it to it's
>  PostScript RIP (this is the norm with most Adobe PDF RIPs). This is
>  the reason that printers with PDF RIPs often also have a harddisc.
> - the PDF gets directly interpreted by a PDF RIP (JAWS, Harlequin and
>  newer Adobe PDF RIPs do this).

Thanks for this info.  As I said, I can use pdf2ps, or CUPS will.
(OT, but for me CUPS is presently out of action and I'm copying PS
files directly to /dev/usb/lp0.  A handshake/signalling problem on
the side of the LaserJet 4050, I suspect.)

Yes, one can create PDF output, and convert it to PS to print it, but
I don't feel good about that when the doc contains images.  There is
an unnecessary conversion.  And the reverse, ps2pdf, is possible and
probably better.  The idea of PDF as more device-independent than
PS...?

If I convert from .RAF to .PSD to .PDF to .PS the last step, to .PS,
is fundamental, that's what the printer has to have, but the .PDF step
is, to repeat, redundant.  If the text processor generates PS I don't
have to convert images to PDF.

What can perhaps be said is that PDF is a more tightly controlled
format and that the incompatibilities that can arise between prepress
and press don't, there's no need to overlay DSC conventions because
there is intrinsically less flexibility and less programmability.

That fact, that there is greater restriction and control over the
workflow, is perhaps of advantage to the more monetized side of all
this.  In that sense, and perhaps in that sense alone, PDF is not
redundant, has a role.

If Han The Thanh wants to generate PDF and calls a program pdftex I'm
not going to complain.  It is wholly admirable, absolutely brilliant.
It is just that what he wants to do doesn't fit in with what I want to
do.  That's fine, there's a warning up front, I decide.

But I was considering something else, which for some reason is not
called pdfConTeXt, has another name.  It treats PDF as fundamental when
it's not, it's remedial.  For some.

I just hope this hasn't happened because luatex started as pdftex and
for no better reason.

Now (not addressed to Mojca), please don't be a smartarse and tell me
(again) that this is all volunteer work and to send in patches, a new
Device Independent file definition and implementation for Unicode.
I'm full of admiration for you guys with the giant IQs who have
created ConTeXt in tea breaks and at night, never taken a second of
time from the employer, publishing house or university or hairdressing
salon proprietor that pays you.  But I don't pretend to be in that
class.  I'm just a mental midget.  And I have other things to do.  It
ain't my project.  Something else is.

> Or your printer has a PDF RIP (rare).

Rare.

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