Re: Print driver in MacOS X
Re: Print driver in MacOS X
- Subject: Re: Print driver in MacOS X
- From: Chris Murphy <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 22:39:22 -0600
On Monday, July 28, 2003, at 05:51 PM, Xavier Niebla
<email@hidden> writes:
Some one can clarify this for me:
When printing to non PostScript printer like Inkjets in Windows, the
interpretation is done by GDI and in MacOS 9 is done thru QuickDraw;
but what happens in MacOS X?
There are two possible print paths. Carbon applications can, and often
do still use QuickDraw, which is then handled by Quartz. Other Carbon
and all Cocoa and Java apps use Quartz.
I guess this is done by Quartz which is a
PDF engine at system level (am I right?).
There is a PDF to raster processor in OS X, yes. There is currently no
PostScript interpreter built into OS X, but you can download one.
If this is correct, any
printer in MacOS X is PostScript by nature, and if ColorSync is built
in Quartz is possible to color manage any print at system lever.
No. PDF and PostScript aren't the same thing. Any printer effectively
benefits from OS X being a "PDF RIP". If you install a PostScript RIP
like Ghostscript, then any printer for which there are CUPS drivers
then becomes a PostScript RIP. There is currently no PostScript
interpreter built into OS X, but you can download one (such as
Ghostscript).
Purportedly Ghostscript and Gimp-print drivers will be included in the
next major release of OS X. So from that point of view any Gimp-print
supported printer is effective a PostScript printer.
So,
what is the purpose of using a 3th party RIP? I think that a RIP is
unnecessary in MacOS X if the system has a built in RIP based on PDF
which is the successor of PostScript.
PDF is a superset of PostScript. PDF is a file format. PostScript is a
programming language. PDF is declarative, and PostScript is
interpretive. So they aren't really the same thing. PDF is much more
device dependent than PostScript.
Can I trust the interpretation of
the PostScript done by Quartz while printing from applications like
InDesign or Freehand?
There is no PostScript handling by Quartz. Such as it is, I see scaling
and font rendering differences when the Quartz PDF to raster RIP is
used compared to Acrobat or InDesign. But I've also seen this among
different Level 3 RIPs as well. So go figure...
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (TM)
www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor
---------------------------------------------------------
Co-author "Real World Color Management"
Published by PeachPit Press (ISBN 0-201-77340-6)
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