Saturday, March 15, 2014

Postscript printing

I bought a laser printer recently for home office use. I went with the Ricoh Aficio SP 3510DN. What scares me is that some people sell smartchips. Apparently you need to replace a chip if you refill the toner with a non-Ricoh product. It is disgusting how printer manufacturers do not let the consumer decide when and how to replace the toner. Somehow pages need to be counted by a secure chip. So who owns the f-ing printer, me or an evil printer ink corp?

On a happier note: this printer can do Postscript. I absolutely adore Postscript. It's much more than a printer data file. It is a very nifty programming language. Because it is stack-based you really need to wrap your head around the problem, and un-learn a lot of imperative programming skills.

I started programming Postscript when my father purchased an Everex Laserscript LX made by the Abaton division of Everex. That was an awesome printer, despite it's small 2.5Mb memory, and was a clone of the more expensive Apple Laserwriter. I believe we upgraded that memory at some point in time. In 1992 the laser printers were roughly 10 times more expensive. But at least you downright owned your printer, and were not a slave to the ink pushers.

I look forward to adding Postscript features to my software. For instance this Art project I've been working on.

No comments:

Post a Comment