Re: [OT] Printer with or without Postscript

[Johan Vromans]

On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 10:39:35 +1100
Andrew Bernard <address@hidden> wrote:

> Whatever page description
> language your printer uses internally, the printer driver software on
> your computer will convert your file to that language format and print
> it.
> [...]
> Postscript itself is still highly relevant, PDF is essentially a
> Postscript description, and lilypond can generate postscript, which is
> rendered wth Ghostscript - a software RIP.

While this is true, one may not underestimate the role of the printer
driver or software RIP. PostScript is a full-fledged programming language
and a PostScript RIP must carefully implement all programming language
aspects in full. PDF (for printing) is a page description and hence easier
to implement and to process. As a reference, there are several PDF RIPs
(viewers) based on a number of PDF libraries, while there is only one
PostScript RIP.

For this reason I switched to PDF several years ago, after having been
writing PostScript generating tools since 1985. For the end user, a
PostScript generating tool has a big and sometimes hard dependency: a good
software or hardware RIP.

Having said all that, my printer is PostScript based (HP LasetJet 6MP). I
run my LilyPond output through ps2pdf ( = GhostScript RIP ) to create PDF
documents. There is (or maybe: was, haven't checked recently) a noticable
difference between sending LilyPond PostScript directly to the printer,
printing the PDF document from Evince, and sending the PDF directly to the
printer (which uses GhostScript to convert the PDF back into PostScript
again). See e.g. http://www.squirrel.nl/pub/xfer/lpev.png (two scans from
the same document, printed directly (left) and from Evince (right)).

So how to proceed? If you can find a printer with good PostScript support
that is not too expensive, buy it. Otherwise, convert a couple of LilyPond
output files to 600dpi PNG using GhostScript, and view with a good image
viewer. If the output looks good, you can trust your RIP and go for any
decent pixel-printer. If in doubt, Google is your friend.

-- Johan