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Copyright (C) 1992, 1995 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved. This file is part of Aladdin Ghostscript. Aladdin Ghostscript is distributed with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. No author or distributor accepts any responsibility for the consequences of using it, or for whether it serves any particular purpose or works at all, unless he or she says so in writing. Refer to the Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public License (the "License") for full details. Every copy of Aladdin Ghostscript must include a copy of the License, normally in a plain ASCII text file named PUBLIC. The License grants you the right to copy, modify and redistribute Aladdin Ghostscript, but only under certain conditions described in the License. Among other things, the License requires that the copyright notice and this notice be preserved on all copies. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - This file, devices.doc, gives more detailed documentation about certain specific devices for which Ghostscript can produce output. For an overview of Ghostscript and a list of the documentation files, see README. Devices for which this file currently contains documentation: SPARCprinter HP DeskJet 520, 540, and 560C HP DeskJet 500C & 550C HP PaintJet, XL, and XL300 DEC LJ250 Apple Dot Matrix Printer (and Imagewriter) Epson Stylus Color Printer ### ------------------------- The SPARCprinter ------------------------- ### This section was written by Martin Schulte. Introduction ------------ The SPARCprinter is is connected to SPARCStation via a special SBUS card's video inferface, the picture is composed on the host and only a bitmap is send to the printer unit. Together with a SPARCprinter, you always buy (as far as I know) software that enables you to do postscript-printing on your SPARCPrinter. So, the need for a Ghostscript-Interface to the SPARCPrinter seems low, but on the other hand some Postscript drawings are not correctly printed with SUN's software: on some pages occured a thin vertical line of rubbish (reproducable), on some Mathematica drawings the text at the axes wasn't rotated. I tried all of these with Ghostscript and always got the expected results. However, replacing proprietary software should never be a bad idea. The problem is that there has yet been no effort to make the SPARCPrinter- driver behave like a BSD output-filter, I made my tests using the script mentioned under Installation. Installation ------------ Add sparc.dev to DEVICE_DEVS and compile ghostscript as described in make.doc. Afterwards, you can use the following script (the way of handling standard input versus filename-arguments doesn't look very clever, has anyone a better idea ?) to print if you substitute <GSPATH> by the place where you installed the ghostscript binary: outcmd1='/vol/local/lib/troff2/psxlate -r' outcmd2='<GSPATH> -I/home/schulte/gs252 -sDEVICE=sparc -sOUTPUTFILE=/dev/lpvi0 -' if [ $# -eq 0 ] then $outcmd1 | $outcmd2 else cat $* | $outcmd1 | $outcmd2 fi Problems -------- Since /dev/lpvi can only be opened for exclusive use, another job having opened it (engine_ctl_sparc or another ghostscript as the most probable canidates) will cause to stop ghostscript with "Error: /invalidfileaccess in --.outputpage--" In case of common printer problems like out of paper, a warning describing the reason will be printed to stdout, the driver will try to access again and again each five seconds. Due to a problem with the device-driver (in the kernel) the reason of printer failure is not always correctly reported to program. This is the case at least if you open the top cover (Error in the display: E5). Look to the display at the printer if a "Printer problem with unknown reason" is reported. Fatal errors will cause the print-job to be terminated. ### ------------------------------ End --------------------------------- ### ### ------------------- H-P color inkjet printers ---------------------- ### ### (DeskJet 500C, DeskJet 550C, PaintJet, PaintJet XL, PaintJet XL300 ### ### and the DEC LJ250 which can operate in a Paintjet-compatible mode) ### This section was written by George Cameron. Information and tips on usage for the drivers contained in gdevcdj.c ==================================================================== OVERVIEW: There are 6 generic drivers contained in the source module: 1 - cdj500: HP DeskJet 500C and 540C 2 - cdj550: HP DeskJet 550C and 560C 3 - pjxl300: HP PaintJet XL300 and DeskJet 1200C 4 - pjtest: HP PaintJet 5 - pjxltest: HP PaintJet XL 6 - declj250: DEC LJ250 All of these drivers have 8-bit (monochrome), 16-bit and 24-bit (colour) and for the DJ 550C 32-bit, (colour, cmyk mode) options in addition to standard colour and mono drivers. It is also possible to set various printer-specific parameters from the gs command line, eg. gs -sDEVICE=cdeskjet -dBitsPerPixel=16 -dDepletion=1 -dShingling=2 tiger.ps NB/ The old names cdeskjet, cdjcolor and cdjmono drivers have been retained; however, their functionality duplicates that available using the above drivers (and cdeskjet is identical to cdj500), ie. we can use: gs -sDEVICE=cdj500 -dBitsPerPixel=24 ... for cdjcolor, and gs -sDEVICE=cdj500 -dBitsPerPixel=1 ... for cdjmono DEFAULT PAPER SIZE: If the preprocessor symbol A4 is defined, the default paper size is the European A4 size; otherwise it is the U.S. letter size (8.5"x11"). Other paper sizes (including A3 for the PaintJet XL and PaintJet XL300) may be specified on the command line as explained in the Ghostscript documentation. DEFAULT BITS-PER-PIXEL: If the preprocessor symbol BITSPERPIXEL is defined as an integer (see below for the range of allowable values), this number will be used to define the default bits-per-pixel (ie. bit depth) for the generic drivers. If the symbol is not defined, the default is set to 24 bits per pixel. It is of course still possible to specify the value from the command line, as described below. Note also that the cdeskjet, cdjcolor and cdjmono drivers are unaffected by setting this symbol, as their default settings are predefined to be 1, 3 and 24 respectively. DESKJET PHYSICAL LIMITS: Maximum printing width = 2400 dots = 8". The printer manuals say that the maximum recommended printing height on the page is 10.3", but since this is obviously not true for A4 paper, and I have been unable to detect any problems in printing longer page lengths, this would seem to be a rather artificial restriction. All Deskjets have 1/2" unprintable bottom margin, due to the mechanical arrangement used to grab the paper. Side margins are approximately 0.25" for US Letter paper, and 0.15" for A4. COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS: Several printer 'properties' have been implemented for these printers. Those available so far are all integer quantities, and thus may be specified as eg. gs -dBitsPerPixel=32 -dShingling=1 ... which sets the BitsPerPixel parameter to 32 and the Shingling parameter to 1. BITS-PER-PIXEL: All of the drivers in gdevcdj.c accept a command line option to set the BitsPerPixel property. This gives considerable flexibility in choosing various trade-offs between speed/quality/colour etc. The valid numbers are: 1: This is a standard Ghostscript monochrome driver, and uses black ink (by installing the separate mono cartridge in the case of the DeskJet 500C, or automatically for the other printers) 3: A standard Ghostscript colour driver, using internal dithering. This is fast to compute and to print, but the clustered dithering can lose some detail and colour fidelity. 8: An 'error-diffusion' monochrome driver which uses Floyd-Steinberg dithering to print greyscale images. The patterns are much more randomised than with the normal clustered dithering, but the data files can be much larger and somewhat slower to print. 16: This is a 'cheaper' version of the following (24-bit) driver, which generates a Floyd-Steinberg colour dithered output using the minimum amount of memory (this may be helpful when using IBM PC's when Ghostscript has not been compiled using a 32-bit 386-style compiler). The quality can be almost as good as the 24-bit version. 24: A high-quality colour driver using Floyd-Steinberg dithering for maximum detail and colour range. However it is very memory intensive and thus can be slow to compute (and it tends to produce rather larger raw data files, so they can also be slower to print). 32: This is for the DeskJet 550C only, which uses the black cartridge and the colour cartridge simultaneously (ie. CMYK printing). This printer can be both faster and give higher quality than the DeskJet 500C, because of the true black ink. (Note that the 24-bit mode also permits CMYK printing on this printer, and uses less memory. Any differences between 24-bit and 32-bit should be very small.) DESKJET PROPERTIES: The addional properties available for the DeskJets are: BlackCorrect (int) /* Colour correction to give * better blacks when using the DJ500C * in colour mode, eg. the default of 4 * reduces the cyan component to 4/5 * Range accepted: 0 - 9 (0 = none) */ Shingling (int) /* Interlaced, multi-pass printing * 0 = none, 1 = 50%, 2 = 25%, 2 is * best & slowest */ Depletion (int) /* 'Intelligent' dot-removal * 0 = none, 1 = 25%, 2 = 50%, 1 best * for graphics? * Use 0 for transparencies */ PAINTJET XL300/PAINTJET XL PROPERTIES: PrintQuality (int) /* Mechanical print quality * -1 = fast, 0 = normal, 1 = presentation * Fast mode reduces ink usage and uses * single-pass operation for some media * types. Presentation uses more ink and * max number of passes, ie. slowest * printing for highest quality */ RenderType (int) /* 0 = driver does dithering * 1 = snap to primaries * 2 = snap black -> white, others to black * 3 = ordered dither * 4 = error diffusion * 5 = monochrome ordered dither * 6 = monochrome error diffusion * 7 = cluster ordered dither * 8 = monochrome cluster ordered dither * 9 = user-defined dither (not supported) * 10 = monochrome user-defined dither ns. */ PAINTJET PROPERTIES: No additional properties GAMMA CORRECTION: One consequence of using Floyd-Steinberg dithering rather than Ghostscript's default clustered ordered dither is that it is much more obvious that the ink dots are rather larger on the page than their nominal 1/180" or 1/300" size (clustering the dots tends to minimise this effect). Thus it is often the case that the printed result is rather too dark. A simple empirical correction for this may be achieved by preceding the actual postscript file to be printed by a short file which effectively sets the gamma for the device, eg. gs ... gamma.ps colorpic.ps -c quit where gamma.ps is %! {0.333 exp} dup dup currenttransfer setcolortransfer This example sets the gamma for r, g, and b to 3, which seems to work reasonably well in practice. GENERAL TIPS: For all the above printers, the paper is critically important to the final results. Smoother, less fibrous paper is generally better (and suggested types are given in the printer manuals). In particular, the special ink-jet paper can make a big difference; the colours are brighter, but most importantly, there is almost no colour bleed, even with adjacent areas of very heavy inking. Similarly, the special coated transparencies also work well (and ordinary transparencies do not work at all!) The unix-lpr.sh provides one example of setting up a multi-option colour postscript lpr queue on Unix systems, and includes the ability to choose a range of different colour options and printer accounting and error logging. CAVEAT EMPTOR!: It is not always easy for me to test all of these drivers, as the only colour printer I have here is the DeskJet 500C. I rely on others testing drivers for the additional machines and reporting their findings back to me. HP's 600x300 dpi resolution-enhanced mode for inkjet printers ============================================================= This feature is available on HP's more recent inkjet printers, including the Deskjet 520 (mono) 540 (mono or colour) and 560C (mono and colour). The colour and monochrome drivers for the HP deskjet 550c are (probably) the best you will get for use with ghostscript, for the following reasons: These printers do not offer true 600x300 dpi resolution. Those that print in colour are strictly 300x300 dpi in colour mode, while in mono mode there is a pseudo 600x300 dot mode, with the restriction that you can't print two adjacent dots. Thus, in effect what you have is 600 dpi dot positioning, but on average you don't get more dots per line. What this does give is the possibility to have eg. sharper character outlines, as you can place dots on the edges nearer to their ideal positions - this is why it is worth doing. However, HP will not support user-level programming of this resolution-enhanced mode, one reason being that (I understand) all the dot spacing has to be done by the driver, and if you get it wrong, you can actually damage the print head. To summarise, you may lose a smidgin of (potential) text clarity using the 550c drivers (cdj550, cdjcolor, cdjmono etc.), but other than that, they are the ones for the job. ### ------------------------------ End --------------------------------- ### ### ------------------- Apple Dot Matrix Printer ---------------------- ### This section was written by Mark Wedel. The Dot Matrix Driver (DMP) driver is a simple driver I wrote. It could more more efficient, but it seems to print the images fine. The Dot Matrix Printer was a parallel predecessor to the Imagewriter printer. As far as I know, the Imagewriter commands are a superset to those of the Dot Matrix printer, so the driver should work fine at generating output that can be printed on Imagewriters. A few notes (from the gdevadmp.c file): * To print out images, it sets the printer for unidirection printing * and 15 cpi (120 dpi). IT sets line feed to 1/9 of an inch (72 dpi). * When finished, it sets things back to bidirection print, 1/8" line * feeds, and 12 cpi. There does not appear to be a way to reset * things to initial values. * * This code does not set for 8 bit characters (which is required). It * also assumes that carriage return/newline is needed, and not just * carriage return. These are all switch settings on the DMP, and * I have configured them for 8 bit data and cr only. * * You can search for the strings Init and Reset (in devdemp.c) to find the * strings that set up the printer and clear things when finished, and change * them to meet your needs. * * Also, you need to make sure that the printer daemon (assuming unix) * doesn't change the data as it is being printed. I have set my * printcap file (sunos 4.1.1) with the string: * ms=pass8,-opost * and it works fine. Mark Wedel master@cats.ucsc.edu ### ------------------------------ End --------------------------------- ### ### ------------------ The Epson Stylus Color printer ------------------ ### Epson Stylus-Color Driver, contributed by Gunther Hess (address: see below) The Ghostscript-Device is stcolor and the driver resides in the file named gdevstc.c. It supports the following Options, besides the standard ones: BitsPerPixel 1, 4, 8, 24 Default: -dBitsPerPixel=24 SpotSize 4 floats Default: -dSpotSize='{1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0}' OutputCode Bitfield Default: -dOutputCode=24 (Bidir,SoftWeave) 4 -> Microweave 8 -> SoftWeave 16 -> Bidirectional 512 -> Messages Valid Resolutions: -r180x90, -r180x180, -r180x360, -r180x720 -r360x90, -r360x180, -r360x360(D), -r360x720 -r720x90, -r720x180, -r720x360, -r720x720 Default: -r360x360 An example for 720x720Dpi-Freaks, to be used with special paper: gs -sDEVICE=stcolor -r720x720 -dSpotSize='{2.6 2.4 2.6 2}' NOTE: Due to a buggy behaviour during testing, a compile-time option to disable setting SpotSize from the command-line was provided. If this option was used, one should not use 720x720 DpI - perhaps except for overhead-transparents. This applies to versions 1.10/1.11. [If I'd knew what's going on, I'd fixed it. :-(] A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S: ******************************** Two other driver-sources were used when coding this driver: gdevcdj.c, contributed by George Cameron - g.cameron@biomed.abdn.ac.ukis Koert Zeilstra - koert@zen.cais.com Eckhard Rueggeberg - eckhard@ts.go.dlr.de and gdevescp.c, contributed by Richard Brown - rab@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au The Ghostscript-Interface and part of the Floyd-Steinberg algorithm are almost copies from the Deskjet-Driver and some hints for the Printer- Interface are from the Stylus 800 driver. While I wish to thank the authors of the drivers mentioned above, they are by no means responsible for bugs in the stcolor-driver - just for the features. | |Duisburg 30-JAN-1995, Gunther Hess | |Up to 15-MAR-1995 E-Mail: hess@ims.fhg.de |After March '95, one should use snail-mail or phone: | |Gunther Hess phone: ++49 203 376273 |Richard Wagner Strasse 112 |D-47057 Duisburg |Germany | ****************************************************************************** EXCUSE: I'm just an owner of the Epson Stylus-Color, I've only the owners-manual. So I'm unable to use the advanced features of the printer, since my local Epson-Dealer cannot deliver a Programmers-Manual since December, 7th. FEATURES: The driver generates runlength-encoded data suitable for the Epson Stylus-Color - that famous 720x720DpI paper-inker. Any mix of X-Resolutions out of 180/360/720DpI and Y-Resolutions out of 90/180/360/720DpI is supported. Under normal circumstances the printer does not allow Y-Resolutions larger than the X-Resolution. This combinations are handeled by the SoftWeave-Code [(TM) :-)], which is a software-pendant for the Microweave-Feature of the printer. IMHO the combinations 360x720 or 720x360 are a real *MUST*, both of them can only be reached by SoftWeave. Since 720x720DpI-Printing produces just wonderful black, even on the "Special 720DpI-Paper" and takes much more printing time. The option BitsPerPixel controls wether Black&White- or Color-Printing will happen and wether GhostScripts-Dithering or the Drivers Floyd- Steinberg-Algorithm will be used. The Default is to use Floyd-Steinberg and color-printing. There are four modes: BitsPerPixel = 1 -> monochrome, GS-Dithering BitsPerPixel = 4 -> color, GS-Dithering BitsPerPixel = 8 -> monochrome, Floyd-Steinberg Error-Diffusion BitsPerPixel = 24(D) -> color, Floyd-Steinberg Error-Diffusion If the Floyd-Steinberg-Algorithm is used, there is another option of the Driver: "SpotSize". SpotSize is an array of four floats, that defines the area, that an dot of ink covers, measured in Pixels, for each ink. The order of the values is: -dSpotSize='{Black Cyan Magenta Yellow}' A real 720x720DpI-Printer should work with the default of SpotSize='{1 1 1 1}', but that's not true for the Epson Stylus-Color. Unless one increses SpotSize to approximately 2.0 or above, very well inked (Special-) Paper is the result. Since SpotSizes can be adjusted for each individual color, this option can be `abused' for some kind of color-correction. (My favourites: see the example above) | | It's a matter of taste, but I think Floyd-Steinberg produces better | pictures - at the expense of computation time. My 486/DX2 is >90% | loaded when processing data for the printer, and this is almost independend | of the image-complexity. On the other Hand the Ghostscript-Algorithms | are much faster and there is not that much difference at the high | resolutions. Unfortunatley at 720x720DpI Floyd-Steinberg is required | to "emulate" the Depletion-Mode of the HP-Printers, but fortunately | the advanage above 360x720 (perferably) or 720x360 is just marginal. | OutputCode is another driver-option, which is actually a Bit-Field and its main purpose is debugging of the Driver. Extensive use of this option is not recomended, since the coding may change. The current coding is: Bits 0-1 : Compression-Type (currently unused, due to lack of manual) 0: plain, 1: runlength(D), 2: delta-row, 3: tiff Bits 2-3 : Weave-Mode 0: none, 4: Hardware-Microweave, 8: Software-Weave(D), 12: definitly illegal Bit 4: 0: unidirectional-Printing, 16: bidirectional-Printing(D) Bit 9: 0: silence(D), 512: Debugging-Messages on. Except for the `Weave-Mode' this stuff should be self-explanatory. I'd like to mention, that bidirectional-printing gains significant speed (45%) without loss of print-quality. The Weave-Mode is a special-feature of the Epson-Printer. It is a multi-pass printing-mode, where the head moves down head-height/#passes between the passes. This causes the 'Zebra-Look' to vanish and should be used. Only some resolutions are supported, so this mode was implemented in software too. Besides the effect of more resolutions, SoftWeave gains significant speed in 720x720DpI, which is an 8-Pass mode, where the printer cannot buffer enough rows to print 15-rows (at 90DpI) per pass (?). But on some popular Operating-Systems, Softweave might be troublesome too, since the buffersize in 720x720DpI-Mode is approximately 500k. T E S T S (version 1.11) (1.10) DpI BPP OC i486DX2 Real-Time 180x 90 1 513 none/uni golfer.ps 2.26s 0:02.59 (All bufferd) 180x 90 4 513 none/uni golfer.ps 5.05s 0:05.43 (All bufferd) 180x180 8 533 micro/bi golfer.ps 11.15s 0:25.50 (Mostly bufferd) 180x360 24 - soft/bi escher.ps 72.038 2:04.98 (Partly bufferd) 180x720 24 529 soft/bi colorcir.ps 81.19s 3:08.46 (SS='{2 2 2 1}') 360x 90 1 533 none/bi colorcir.ps 5.65s 0:12.25 (Mostly bufferd) 360x180 8 529 none/bi golfer.ps 18.29s 0:32.29 (Mostly bufferd) 360x360 24 533 micro/bi kathy.ps 215.57s 3:40.68 360x720 1 - soft/bi kathy.ps 108.91s 4:38.65 (Dither-Bug) 720x 90 8 513 none/uni golfer.ps 22.44s 1:08.89 (Mostly bufferd) 720x180 24 529 soft/bi escher.ps 169.32s 2:00.53 (Partly buffered) 720x360 24 529 soft/bi kathy.ps 299.48s 6:08.93 720x720 24 537 soft/bi tropics.ps 748.71s 13:37.57 (SS='{2.6 2.4 2.6 2}') 720x720 24 533 micro/bi tropics.ps 774.48s 33:21.83 (SS='{2.6 2.4 2.6 2}') Notes: A) OC (OutputCode) is not necessarily related to used mode, since I tested the automatic switching too. B) kathy & tropics are full-page color-images with 24Bit rgb-Data. C) Amazingly the CP-Time of SoftWeave at 720x720 is less than MicroWeave, this might be a result of the more efficient usage of the loop-codes when filling the buffer. (SoftWeave processes about 15 scans at a time, while MicroWeave reads scan by scan) ### ------------------------------ End --------------------------------- ###