[cups.general] On file format transformation

[Michael Sweet]

Jacky Chen wrote:
>      Hello!
>              I have read the document "CUPS Design Description" on
>      http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/spec-design.html and some messages
>      in this mailing list.
> 
>              For a file to print and a non-PostScript printer, does CUPS first
>      transform the file to a PostScript file with some filter, and then
>      transform the PostScript file to a printer-dependent command sequence
>      with the printer driver?

That depends entirely on the file format, driver, and platform.

For Linux, non-image files will get converted to device-dependent
PostScript and then to CUPS raster data using Ghostscript.

For image files, the imagetoraster filter converts them to CUPS
raster data.

The CUPS raster data is converted to a printable form using a
printer-specific filter.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com