Re: [Groff] Color and older PS printers

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi,

Mike Bishop wrote:
> I have an aged QMS PS 410 laser (along with others) on my network.
> Postscript generated with the 1.18.1 groff failes to print on this
> device--that generated with 1.17.2 has no problem.
> 
> A diff between files generated by each version (with the -c option on
> 1.18.1)) gives assorted setxxxcolor/setgray etc., commands.  The QMS
> printer reports "Postscript Version 52.4".
> 
> So, /should/ older PS printers work, or is their some other method for
> defeating color on some printers, not on others (for example, some
> special option to grops)?

As Ted later pointed out, the PostScript now being generated by grops
assumes an interpreter that can cope with setgray, etc., i.e. Level 2.
(It seems that grops should have an option to stick to Level 1
facilities but maybe this isn't practical.)

Daniel Senderowicz wrote:
> I wonder how you do to print other postcript files (not those
> generated by groff).
> 
> In general I use ghoscript with the following statement:
> 
> gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -r300 -sDEVICE=psmono -sOutputFile=-  filename
>     >out.ps
> 
> This works for everything, but is sloooooowwwwww (bit mapped).

GhostScript comes with ps2ps(1) which lets you do

    ps2ps -dLanguageLevel=1 input.ps output.ps

to turn input.ps into Level 1 PostScript in output.ps.  It just uses
gs(1) to do

    gs -q -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=output.ps -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
        -dSAFER -dLanguageLevel=1 input.ps

The pswrite device doesn't produce a bitmap like psmono so it should be
*much* quicker.

Cheers,


Ralph.