[cups] cups 2.0.2 / cups-filters-1.0.62 && printing UTF-8 text files

Johannes Meixner jsmeix at suse.de
Wed Mar 11 01:50:11 PDT 2015


Hello,

On Mar 11 08:45 Matthias Apitz wrote (excerpt):
> Re/ fonts too big: we stumpled over this already while using the
> FreeFonts with texttops of CUPS 1.4.3; this is not only a problem for
> the printers itself, but as well for the transfer and interpretion time
> of the resulting Postscript file; with the FreeFonts embedded in the
> Postscript file any printout of a few UTF-8 text results in around 1
> MByte Postscript file size;

Perhaps a stupid question:
Is 1 MByte PostScript file size because of an embeeded big font
really an issue on nowadays PostScript printers?
(My cheap PostScript printer at home has more than 100 MB memory.)

> we handcrafted a workaround by rastering the
> Postscript to PCL5 with ghostscript before sending it to the printer.
> It would be nice if this could be done as an option by text2ps too on
> the fly.

A filter progran that converts text into PostScript must
always output PostScript and nothing else because the
CUPS filtering system cannot deal with filters that
output different formats.

If the PostScript output from text2ps chould be converted
into any other format it is usually done by a subsequent
separated filter (e.g. something like a "ps2pcl5e").

If text input should be converted into PCL5e this could also
be done by a single filter (e.g. text2pcl5) that converts text
into PCL5e but then there is the drawback that any text input
will be converted into PCL5e because the CUPS filtering system
cannot deal with several filters for exact same input format.
When there are several filters available for same input MIME type,
the CUPS filtering system will usually choose one same filter
(the cheapest) to process that input format (except special
exceptions that depend on the final format that is requested
by the particular print queue according to its PPD).

For more information you may have a look at
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_Your_Own_Filters_to_Print_with_CUPS


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX GmbH - GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Jane Smithard, Jennifer Guild,
Dilip Upmanyu, Graham Norton - HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg)




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