🚀 go-pugleaf

James Landon Jones wrote:
> 
> I'm in the market for a new high-end printer but am concerned that it uses something called Post Script Emulation. I understand that this is not an Adobe product but is a generic version of PS. Is there any reason why I should avoid this and focus on printers with full Adobe PS?

I suppose it depends on the quality of the 'clone', your intended
purposes for it, and the sources of the PostScript code you'll be
sending it. Where I work we have a Harlequin RIP by ECRM (licensed
from Global Graphics) driving our imagesetter; it's not Adobe
PostScript but it happily processes just about anything we throw at
it using common prepress applications like QuarkXPress (which is
particularly notorious for 'peculiar' PS output), Macromedia
FreeHand, and CorelDraw. A much earlier version, which we were
running about five years ago, would occasionally have problems with
TrueType (Type 42) fonts, but I don't know that RIPs with an Adobe
interpreter did any better at the time. We have an HP LaserJet 5000N
laser printer with Adobe PS; it sometimes makes a mess of TrueType
fonts to which QX has applied traps.

At any rate it would be best if you were to talk to people with
similar software and workflows to yours, to see if there are specific
issues relevant to your situation. Will the vendor let you test the
printer with your system and software before you buy it, or at least
process some PS output that you provide on disk?

--Odysseus

James

It may depend on the printer; we have a number of PostScript emulators. The Lexmark Optra S1250/1255 generally work pretty well for PostScript 2 pages, although they can barf pretty badly (many pages with a few lines of binary at the top) when they can't interpret files sent via Imprint. The Lexmark Optra T610 handled all the PostScript 3 tests I threw at it, and appears pretty stable. The HP Color LaserJet 5M was a real pig for output times, but it handled most files.

Good luck.