CUPS native rasterization versus Ghostscript/foomatic/gutenprint

Priyanka priyanka.siwach at newgen.co.in
Sun Sep 21 23:35:24 PDT 2008


Hello,

I am new to Mac/unix programming and developing a PCL 6 printer driver for Mac. I have been successful in developing a rastertopcl type filter and know how to customize it according to my printer.
But cups printer drivers work in 2 steps:
1) convert ps to raster (done by cups/ghostscript)
2) convert raster to pcl (done by my printer driver)

However it is mentioned at many places on internet that ghostscript can be used to convert ps to pcl directly by skipping "raster conversion" step. It seems that various optimized algorithms (e.g., halftoning, compression etc) are available in gutenprint/ghostscript code which can be utilized if we develop the printer driver using ghostscript.

I am now wondering whether I should develop the driver using "native cups rasterization" or using "gutenprint"/"ghostscript" etc.
Can anybody suggest, depending on these criteria:
- Performance
- stability
- Quality
- Completeness etc...

Regards,
Priyanka




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