How can I test whether a printer has true PostScript?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Julian Vrieslander
  • Start date Start date
Julian said:
I tried this on an HP printer and it worked.

$ telnet xxx.xx.xx.xx 9100
Trying xxx.xx.xx.xx...
Connected to xxx.xx.xx.xx.
Escape character is '^]'.
executive

This brought up a banner with identification, copyright, and PS version
number. But when I tried it on the Xerox Phaser 3500, it did not work.
...
terminal. Instead, the 3500 printed out a page with the word
"executive" on it.
Click to expand...

Looks as though the 3500 is configured for printer-language autoselect
on the AppSocket port. That is, it probably looks at the first two
incoming characters and if they are %! it fires up the PS interpreter,
otherwise it assumes PCL and your characters just get printed (except
for PCL escape sequences).

You could try a couple of things. One would be to telnet to port 9100
again, type %! as the first two characters, a newline, *then*
executive.
It might not work though if the telnet client sends any bytes as part
of
telnet protocol so the %! are not really first (Kermit would work in
that
case). The easier way is probably to go to the printer front panel
network config menu and set the AppSocket page language to PS only.

-Chap
 
I used a version that didn't have support for anything else. It was typically
used for connecting a DECsystem-20 to 8080-based systems running CP/M. These
early micros had RS-232 serial ports, but ethernet didn't exist for them yet
(as far as I know).
Click to expand...

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/whatsnew.html
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/dec20.html#kermit

Ok... your info hold some weight... looks like "1981: Kermit
protocol designed at Columbia University and first implementations
written (CP/M, DEC-20)." with the intended application transfering
files from the dec-20 to floppy disks on a micro computer is the
earliest entry. I can totally see replacing terminals with micros for
this application, and as they were already wired for serial no mucking
around with new cables and as a 90k floppy was the upgrade I can also
see that 9600bps more than adquate.
 
Jim said:
Thanks for the information. I've opened a discussion over at Wikipedia,
suggesting that the evidence above doesn't support the Frog/Muppet
statement. It will be interesting to see if anyone can provide such
evidence. If not, a revision of the article will be appropriate.
Click to expand...

The full story is in footnote 3 on page 3 of the Kermit book; I quoted
it in
full in the wikipedia discussion. Briefly, they made up acronyms to
explain
the word until they had secured permission from Henson Associates to
'fess
up that it was named after the frog. :)
 
zakezuke said:
Was Kermit designed for communication over tty lines? I know that is
one application for kermit but kermit according to the columbia.edu
Click to expand...

Yes - it was born the same year as TCP/IP (a brand new DARPA networking
protocol nobody had heard of); Ethernet existed, but so did a large
field of
competing networking technologies with incompatible and expensive
cabling
and interfaces, and if you had a roomful of assorted boxes, probably
EIA-232
serial ports were about the only remotely standardized comm facilities
you
could count on them all having in common ... and no matter what the
boxes
were, after a while you could be pretty sure somebody had ported Kermit
to them.

The major Kermit clients from Columbia have sprouted support for TCP,
TELNET, FTP, HTTP, ... over the years just so it remains the Swiss army
knife of communication programs - if you have any odd job that requires
automating some communication between some oddball boxes in any of
these major protocols, and you already know the Kermit client and its
scripting language, you're pretty much in business.

Note that when you tell a Kermit client to connect over TCP, it no
longer needs to use the original Kermit protocol - that is an error-
correcting protocol, and TCP takes care of that.
 
Julian said:
The manual for the Phaser 3500 mentions "PostScript" many times, but the
phrase "Adobe PostScript" does not appear anywhere. It contains the
text "Adobe (r)", but only in the usual boilerplate listing of
trademarks for all third-party products that may be associated with the
...
As mentioned in my original post, I tried to get a definitive answer
from Xerox. Two of their reps told me, after checking with their expert
sources within the company, that the 3500 has true Adobe PS 3. But I'm
inclined to believe that these people are poorly either poorly informed,
Click to expand...

My Phaser 750, which is unquestionably Adobe PS 3 (executive says so,
and the ROM chips are labeled (C) Adobe Sys) also has no Adobe logo
anywhere on the case, and no mention of Adobe in the user manual
(except in the trademark boilerplate, just as you describe). You can't
go
by these signs; ask the interpreter! If Xerox tells you it's Adobe,
they
might not be lying; they're a fairly prominent organization to run that
kind
of a risk.

-Chap
 
Chapman Flack said:
My Phaser 750, which is unquestionably Adobe PS 3 (executive says so,
and the ROM chips are labeled (C) Adobe Sys) also has no Adobe logo
anywhere on the case, and no mention of Adobe in the user manual
(except in the trademark boilerplate, just as you describe). You
can't go by these signs; ask the interpreter!
Click to expand...

As I reported in another message, I tried a telnet connection to the PS
interpreter. But I had only brief access to a Phaser 3500 installed in
another department. I could not get any response from the interpreter.
If Xerox tells you it's Adobe, they might not be lying; they're a
fairly prominent organization to run that kind of a risk.
Click to expand...

I would not put it past them to spread a little ambiguity. The
promotional materials for the 3500 are also ambiguous about its
resolution spec. They use the phrase "1200 dpi quality", which is
probably marketer's weaselspeak for some sort of resolution enhancement
or interpolation scheme. The 3500 is almost certainly a 600 dpi device.
When I compare its output against a true 1200 dpi device, there is an
obvious difference in the greyscale dotscreens.

Their promotional materials for the more expensive printers give much
clearer indications that they contain true PS.
 
Although Columbia's historical web pages say nothing about the origin of
the name "Kermit" for the protocol, their current web page for Kermit
says:

The Kermit protocol and software are named after Kermit the Frog, star
of the television series, The Muppet Show; the name Kermit is used by
permission of Henson Associates, Inc.
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/kermit.html
Click to expand...

Kermit as "(K)L10 (E)RROR-FREE . . . " seems to be a good example of a
retronym, that is, an acronym that was built after the fact. First name
it KERMIT, then think up some words that fit the initials.
An outstanding example of a retronym is PING, Packet InterNet Groper.
Totally bogus.

Shouldn't this discussion be going on in alt.folklore.computers?

carl
 
Julian said:
I would not put it past them to spread a little ambiguity. The
Click to expand...

In this thread, has anybody looked here yet?

http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/product.pl?product=3500&page=spec

Language support: Adobe® PostScript® Level 3™, PCL® 6, PCL® 5e

The spec page says Adobe. The reps you called said Adobe. If there's
really still any doubt, you might try executive again the next time
you're
in the dept with the 3500. after setting the AppSocket page language to
PostScript, as I suggested earlier. But I am not sure why there would
be
any doubt.
promotional materials for the 3500 are also ambiguous about its
resolution spec. They use the phrase "1200 dpi quality", which is
Click to expand...

Maximum resolution: 1200 dpi Image Quality
probably marketer's weaselspeak for some sort of resolution enhancement
Click to expand...

well, that does look kind of suspicious, but I wonder if "Image
Quality" is their
name for the printer's highest resolution setting. I'll see if I can
find out.
When I compare its output against a true 1200 dpi device, there is an
obvious difference in the greyscale dotscreens.
Click to expand...

Was this a test (a) on the same page input (b) with specified halftone
screens
(c) explicitly selecting the printer's maximum resolution? There are a
lot of
variables here.

I don't work for Xerox, but I've been very pleased with my 750 and I
have
found very little to complain of in the quality of any of their specs,
user, or
service documentation.

-Chap
 
Chapman Flack said:
In this thread, has anybody looked here yet?

http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/product.pl?product=3500&page=spec

Language support: Adobe® PostScript® Level 3™, PCL® 6, PCL® 5e
Click to expand...

I did see that page, and mentioned it in previous posts. The wording is
ambiguous. "Language support = Adobe PS" does not necessarily mean that
the interpreter was sourced from Adobe. Just enough wiggle room for the
lawyers.

Note that the equivalent webpage for the 4500 makes a prominent mention
of "True Adobe PostScript 3" as a significant feature. Not so on the
3500's webpage. Then, there is this brochure

<http://www.office.xerox.com/latest/OPBBR-01.PDF>

where the "Print Language" of the 3500 include "PostScript 3 and PCL
6 emulations", but the 4500 and 5500 are listed with "Adobe PostScript
3, PCL 5e and PCL 6 emulations". How much significance should we attach
to the inclusion or absence of the word Adobe, or the placement of a
comma?

Note also that this page describes the resolution of the 4500 as "1200
dpi" and the 3500 as "1200 Image Quality".
Maximum resolution: 1200 dpi Image Quality


well, that does look kind of suspicious, but I wonder if "Image
Quality" is their name for the printer's highest resolution setting.
I'll see if I can find out.


Was this a test (a) on the same page input (b) with specified
halftone screens (c) explicitly selecting the printer's maximum
resolution? There are a lot of variables here.
Click to expand...

I printed several documents, including PDF vector graphics, photos,
greyscale gradients, etc. Same documents on both printers, with both
set to their max resolution/quality setting. It was quite obvious that
the 3500 is not a 1200 dpi device.

I don't want to make a career out of this thread. My printer choice had
narrowed down to the HP 2420DN vs the Xerox Phaser 3500DN. These
products are almost indentical in features and price. The HP has true
1200x1200 dpi and emulated PS. I was thinking of choosing the Xerox if
it had a real Adobe PS interpreter. I still do not know if it does, but
I suspect not. I have no love for HP, having had a bad experience with
one of their AIO inkjets. But, compared to Xerox, HP's promotional
materials are far more honest and clear in the way that they specify
features like PS emulation and resolution.
 
Julian said:
one of their AIO inkjets. But, compared to Xerox, HP's promotional
materials are far more honest and clear in the way that they specify
Click to expand...

I understand the concern, but even as a person who has no
connection to Xerox I cringe to see you use the word 'honest' in this
way. In simple fact there has been nothing shown in this thread to
establish that the PS interpreter is *not* Adobe, and your concern on
that score is just that every time they say it is, on the spec page and
when you ask them directly, you find it unconvincing for reasons of
your own. That's up to you, but nothing establishing dishonesty on
their part has been shown on that question.

There was a chance to get a clear answer when you had the
opportunity to telnet to a 3500, but you had a spot of difficulty
because
port 9100 didn't have PostScript selected and (quite understandably
because you didn't know what to do about it) you gave up before
learning yes or no.

Your hunch *might* be right. I don't know, I don't have a 3500. If you
ever find out it is, then's a good time to start talking about their
honesty.

If you have another chance to print anything on a 3500, you might
print this:

%!PS
36 600 moveto /Courier 12 selectfont //executive 0 get /copyright get
show
showpage

If you get an Adobe copyright, that's a yes. If you get an error,
it's only a maybe-not (because undocumented internals of
executive could have changed even in Adobe's code). But if it's
easier for you to try printing something than to actually run
executive interactively, it might be worth a try.
 
Chapman Flack said:
In simple fact there has been nothing shown in this thread to
establish that the PS interpreter is *not* Adobe, and your concern on
that score is just that every time they say it is, on the spec page and
when you ask them directly, you find it unconvincing for reasons of
your own.
Click to expand...

That's not *quite* true.

The 3400 and 3450 used a clone of Postscript for the interpreter, and in
fact Xerox's own documentation seems to contradict itself.

Those items in themselves are enough to keep one wondering.

Until Xerox can come up with definitive proof that their 3500 uses Adobe
Postscript--like a configuration page showing an Adobe trademark, or a
picture of the processor board with an Adobe trademark screened onto
it--you have to assume the worst.
 
I am not sure why you care whether the printer is genuine Adobe or not? Does
it print your PS Level 3 job?

We have several Phasers, and they never seem to choke on any PS files. I
couldn't care less who wrote the code.

BTW, the real irony is that Xerox invented Postscript, but, like so many
things, didn't know what to do with it. So Warnock and company left Xerox,
started Adobe and got rich!

Many, many years later, and with great reluctance, Xerox licensed Postscript
from Adobe for their production printers to replace their proprietarly
Metacode language. Metacode is truly the ugliest, most obtuse and least
functgional page description language ever invented, and I give thanks every
day that is is disappearing!!


message
news:julianvREMOVE_THIS_PART-AF71B4.14223103112005@gnus01.u.washington.edu...
 
Elmo said:
That's not *quite* true.

The 3400 and 3450 used a clone of Postscript for the interpreter, and in
Click to expand...

That establishes that the 3400 and 3450 did not use Adobe PS, and
indeed
the spec pages for 3400 and 3450 do not say Adobe PS, while the spec
page for the 3500 does.

http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/product.pl?product=3400&page=spec
http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/product.pl?product=3450&page=spec
http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/product.pl?product=3500&page=spec

Has there been anything shown in this thread to establish that the
interpreter
in a 3500 is not Adobe's?
Until Xerox can come up with definitive proof that their 3500 uses Adobe
Postscript--like a configuration page showing an Adobe trademark, or a
picture of the processor board with an Adobe trademark screened onto
it--you have to assume the worst.
Click to expand...

What would you have them do--post scanned images of their circuit
boards
on the website? Do you require that of every other printer vendor? If
they
did, would you then suggest they had added the Adobe logo in Photoshop?
If you fire up the interpreter's executive and it says (C) Adobe will
you then
suggest the message is faked? Where does it stop?

I bought a Xerox printer whose spec page said Adobe PS. I unwrapped it
and what do you know, it has Adobe PS. Do you think Adobe would stand
for it if one of their licensees claimed Adobe PS on the spec pages
both of
products that use it and of products that don't?

I am all in favor of skepticism, and I've seen as many stupid
marketroid
tricks as anybody else. But when it would be so easy for anybody with
access to a 3500 to just go find out the answer to the question, a
thread
so full of innuendo as this one starts to look like a FUD campaign.

I'll be the first to agree that Xerox's use of "Adobe PostScript" on
the
spec page is dishonest, the minute anybody simply establishes that it
actually isn't true. (!)
 
I on my own was also just ahead of buying a new printer, and I would
like to get original Adobe Postscript. Many moved to clones, but I
found the Epson 6200N which is advertised with the full statement
"Adobe Postscript 3", and has the sign:

http://www.adobe.com/products/postscript/main.html

on it's case. Also the mentioned executive command shows Adobe. So I
can be happy: seems really to be the original.

And some complex PDF files of mine are also printed - as exactly the
same PDFs put a clone printer I tested into a deep sleep.

-- Reuti
 
measekite said:
THE BEST SOURCE IS TO CALL ADOBE AND ASK THEM. THEY OF ALL PEOPLE WOULD
KNOW FOR SURE
Click to expand...

Been there, tried that. I've called Adobe corporate HQ on a couple of
occasions. They told me that they do not release this information to
the public. I have no idea why they have that policy.
 
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