Emulated PostScript (was Re: MacOSX-admin Digest, Vol 39, Issue 26)

[Alex Satrapa]

On 02/04/2007, at 11:12 , don montalvo wrote:

> you're right, i should have said "pcl (and emulated postscript)".  
> but how you define "works just fine"? :) i would never recommend  
> emulation for a design/graphics/prepress environment.

My experience with emulated PostScript printers has been abysmal.  
They work for simple text documents just beautifully. They work for  
simple pictures just beautifully. Then you throw something serious  
like a 60-page PhD thesis (complex layout, photos, line art, charts)  
and they end up stalling or corrupting the output - some printers  
choke because the PostScript file is too big (16MB in one case),  
others choke up until the point we remove specific pages (or even a  
single picture).

In the meantime I'm building up a lovely collection of PDFs with  
which to test any future purchase candidates. If the vendor won't  
provide a sample device to test, I won't buy it.

With printers, it's really a case of you don't get what you don't pay  
for.

Alex