Processing speed dependant on ???

[Hemo]

I was just wondering about processing speed. If I send a large postscript file to a printer, and that postscript document contains a lot of things for post script to do (math, if-then, etc) does it generally take a bit longer to get printed output then if I sent the data over exactly how it needs to be printed and the printer only needs to do things like moveto and rline, etc.

The second output is considerably smaller in size, so I am assuming that will lend a bit to speeding up processing at the printer.

A very small example of what I'm talking about:

original file would have a line like this:

/width 18 def
/hx 5 def
4 6 moveto (print text) show
4 width add 100 hx div moveto (other text) show

new file would have this:

4 6 moveto (print text) show
22 20 moveto (other text) show

Thoughts? I'm guessing I might want to harness processing power from the dual-Xeon 512MB server rather than a LaserJet 1200. I am talking about many more changes than what I show, my second file is easily 8k smaller in size.

 

[UncleRick]

Personally I believe it does make a difference although I have never timed it. I do support for high speed network printers and a common complaint when printing large/complex PostScript files is the printer can not print at its rated speed. This is due to the time needed to process the file on the print controller. The faster the controller the faster the job comes out.

You don't notice it as much on lower cpm machines because the controller has more time to process the job between pages.

This is all conjecture based on observation and not on fact.

kind regard,

 

[tgreer]

You'll gain the biggest speed differntial with dictionary lookups. If you keep everything on the stack, and use the stack for your calculations, you won't notice too much speed degradation.

In your above example, rewrite to not need /width and /hx definitions, for example.

That said, of course it's faster to not do any calculations, but then what's the point of knowing PostScript??

Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[Hemo]

Well...

I needed to learn PostScript so I could generate a form layout. Problem is, when the PostScript file is getting passed to my LaserJet 1200, it turns my 19 page-per-minute printer into a 2 page-per-minute printer. I realize there is some overhead with each individual print job. If I send plain text files to this printer, I only get 17-19 ppm if there are that many pages in the file. It takes 75 seconds to print two print jobs of 6 pages each of plain text.

If I let this roll, I have some customers that would be gridlocked since they would be printing over 1200 of these forms per day and each form is a seperate print job.

My output (PostScript) is only about 10038 in size. Not that big, I'm thinking. I just send 10 print jobs to my (already warmed up) printer and it took 3 minutes to print 7 pages.

Ouch.

 

[Hemo]

I started comparing printer processor speed. The sames files that take 3 minutes to print 7 pages on my laserjet 1200 take about 15 seconds on a laserjet 4050tn. Both tests include warmup time.