[cups] PDF emulation

Brian Potkin claremont102 at gmail.com
Tue Sep 4 11:25:16 PDT 2018


On Tue, 4 Sep 2018 at 15:08, Alex Korobkin <korobkin+cups at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 8:33 AM Brian Potkin <claremont102 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think I have a fair idea of what "PostScript emulation" means in a
> > vendor's literature when describing a printer's capabilities. Searching
> > reveals that vendor's were loath to use what Adobe provided, so created
> > their own versions to put on their devices.
> >
> > PCL emulation appears not to be documented, but a guess would be that
> > vendors devised their own PCL interpreters to emulate HP's version.
> >
> > How about "PDF emulation"? What is this emulating?
>
>
> It's emulating a PDF processing engine.

HP's DesignJet literature advertises that the devices have Adobe PostScript 3
RIP and Adobe PDF Print Engine (APPE).capabilities.  I cannot imagine these
being on a lower-end printer. Hence the "emulation" or "imitation". I suppose.

> > Or does it simply mean "This printer can print a PDF"?
>
>
> Yes.
>
>
> > Maybe by converting to PostScript?
> >
>
> I don't know, but the documents that usually fail to be converted from PDF
> to PS, will also fail to print when sent directly to a PDF-capable printer.

Not necessarily. The PostScript produced by cups-filters (say) needn't be the
same as that produced by the printer's PDF interpreter.

> > And is PDF Direct the same thing?
> >
>
> I believe so.

Sounds right.

-- 
Brian.


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