Postscript and Non-Postscript printers

[keatonm]

I was just wondering what the difference is between Postscript and Non-Postscript printers?? Thanks

 

[ASG0856]

If I remember correctly, Postscript is a Printer language that deals with how the printer interprets fonts and images. It has its own font set (as apart from true type) which is usually installed on the computer.

So a Postscript Printer will take a document, and output the native font as Postscript. A non Postscript printer will print the original font. Wikipaedia has a good article all about it

 

[felixc]

Postscript printers have mostly disappeared from the market, because the power of today's computers made it useless. These printers had an additional processor board that processed the print files written in Postscript language. This goes back to the days of DOS machines with a 10Mhz processor, where what you saw on the screen was not what you got on the print. The early MACs were also using this standard for printing. This way they did not have to care about printer drivers, letting the customers pay and extra $300-400 for a Postscript version of the printer.

The PDF document format is a bit in the same spirit as the Postscript. Any machine can share a pdf document, and it is now up to the driver (not the printer) in the computer to make sure that what you see is what you get printed. But this is all for free now.