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Subject:Re: Postscript vs. PDF From:Tim Altom <taltom -at- IQUEST -dot- NET> Date:Wed, 18 Dec 1996 20:14:00 EST
At 12:30 PM 12/18/96 -0800, you wrote:
>We have not found Postscript files to be very portable. What printer driver
>do you use to create them? For our print vendor, we have to use a certain
>printer driver with certain print settings so that their Docutech can read it,
>but that same Postscript file will generate printing errors for most of our
>customers. We use a different printer driver (the most generic one we could
>find) and used the most generic print settings we could, and I still get
>complaints from a few customers that they get errors when they try to print
>it, especially European customers who use A4 paper. But the biggest problem
>our customers have is the size of the Postscript file. Most of the printers
>they are using to try to print out the document do not have enough memory to
>print a file that big. In fact, we can't print files that big on our in-house
>printer.
>We've found PDF files to be a better solution. Even though the customer has
>to go through the extra step of downloading a (free) reader for them, they
>are far more portable. And, the customers can select a range of pages to print
>if their printer can't handle all the pages at once.
>Has anyone else had similar results with Postscript vs. PDF files?
Yep. PS files come in many, many flavors. The most vanilla driver I know is
the Seiko ColorPoint, but even that's not guaranteed. And PS files can be
gargantuan, often far too big for underpowered printers. You can spool them,
but that's often a pain. GhostScript can help, but only to a small degree.
PDF is indeed more portable and, unlike PS, it's compressed. Ironically, PDF
is actually closely related to PS. PDF has also become a favorite of many
printing firms, because it maintains good color definition along with font
and placement data. I use PDF often in Web pages, help files, and other
online applications when I want a single, minimized, compact file with
faithful reproduction. Sure, the reader has to be loaded, but that's a
one-time operation, and if you load Reader 3.0, you can plug it into
Netscape, too.
Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
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