Elmo P. Shagnasty said:
It was a daunting task, one for which I was not prepared at the time.
I'm always willing to be mistaken, if you get around to it.
Unless you are working within the Postscript world,
in which case it's damned handy to have a Postscript RIP
--no matter where it resides and no
matter what chips do the processing.
If you are working in the Ps world, you aren't apt to
be asking why you need Ps in Usenet
But it remains an interesting question for retail buyers
of printers. Why might you want Ps?
Here's another reason why an otherwise ordinary user,
doing color-critical DTP, might want Ps in the printer:
Color printers almost always print in CMYK (not RGB).
If your Windows app works in CMYK space, and
generates its own Ps, you can get that CMYK to the
printer without Mr.Bill trashing it back to RGB space
in the Windows GDI. If you have to use the native PDL
driver on Windows, pretty much forget color-matching.
But the major reason may remain that you get a
documented standardized PDL.
If my aging home laser printer had been host RIP Ps,
it would have ceased being a Ps printer years ago.
I have a couple of iPCL printers (hp C3804A, the original
PhotoSmart) in the basement. They are no longer
useful printers due to lack of driver support, even
though the ink carts might still be available.
A resident Ps printer will remain a useful printer, on any
OS, for as long as the hardware lasts and consumables
remain available.
