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77-511: The concept behind Unidrv is that a complete printer driver need not be written by the hardware manufacturer; only a device-specific minidriver is required that uses the core printing functionality of the Unidrv engine. A minidriver can be a customization file, or a plug-in, that allows special rendering functions or customized UI options. Unidrv supports non- PostScript printers driven by PCL and PCL-like page description languages . The Unidriver

154-571: A Ricoh engine for $ 12,800 in 1983. Sales of the non-networked product were unsurprisingly poor. In 1983, Canon introduced the LBP-CX, a desktop laser printer engine using a laser diode and featuring an output resolution of 300 dpi. In 1984, HP released the first commercially available system based on the LBP-CX, the HP LaserJet . Steve Jobs of Apple Computer had seen the LBP-CX while negotiating for supplies of 3.5" floppy disk drives for

231-596: A "reference model" (but with customization for the Linotronic's different video interface, plus the necessary implementation of "banding" and a hard drive frame buffer and font storage mechanism). Indeed, the PostScript language itself was concurrently enhanced and extended to support these high-resolution "banding" devices (as contrasted to the lower resolution "framing" devices, such as the LaserWriter, in which

308-572: A commercial system called the Xerox 9700 . IBM followed this with the IBM 3800 system in 1976. Both machines were large, room-filling devices handling the combined output of many users. During the mid-1970s, Canon started working on similar machines, and partnered with Hewlett-Packard to produce 1980's HP 2680, which filled only part of a room. Other copier companies also started development of similar systems. HP introduced their first desktop model with

385-459: A descendant of PostScript, provides one such method, and has largely replaced PostScript as the de facto standard for electronic document distribution. On high-end printers, PostScript processors remain common, and their use can dramatically reduce the CPU work involved in printing documents, transferring the work of rendering PostScript images from the computer to the printer. The first version of

462-575: A general-purpose printing solution and they were therefore not widely used. In the late 1990s, Adobe joined Microsoft in developing OpenType , essentially a functional superset of the Type 1 and TrueType formats. When printed to a PostScript output device, the unneeded parts of the OpenType font are omitted, and what is sent to the device by the driver is the same as it would be for a TrueType or Type 1 font, depending on which kind of outlines were present in

539-479: A language suitable for running the entire GUI of a computer. Sun added a number of new commands for timers, mouse control, interrupts and other systems needed for interactivity, and added data structures and language elements to allow it to be completely object oriented internally. A complete GUI, three in fact, were written in NeWS and provided for a time on their workstations. However, the ongoing efforts to standardize

616-744: A language, lacked flexibility, and PARC mounted the Interpress effort to create a successor. In 1978, John Gaffney and Martin Newell then at Xerox PARC wrote J & M or JaM (for "John and Martin") which was used for VLSI design and the investigation of type and graphics printing. This work later evolved and expanded into the Interpress language. Warnock left with Chuck Geschke and founded Adobe Systems in December 1982. They, together with Doug Brotz, Ed Taft and Bill Paxton created

693-522: A large three-dimensional graphics database of New York Harbor . Concurrently, researchers at Xerox PARC had developed the first laser printer and had recognized the need for a standard means of defining page images. In 1975–76 Bob Sproull and William Newman developed the Press format, which was eventually used in the Xerox Star system to drive laser printers. But Press, a data format rather than

770-714: A market in which the Mac is still important. The LaserWriter was the first major printer designed by Apple to use the new Snow White design language created by Frog Design . It also continued a departure from the beige color that characterized the Apple and Macintosh products to that time by using the same brighter, creamy off-white color first introduced with the Apple IIc and Apple Scribe Printer 8 months earlier. In that regard it and its successors stood out among all of Apple's Macintosh product offerings until 1987, when Apple adopted

847-462: A printer. When Steve Jobs left Apple and started NeXT , he pitched Adobe on the idea of using PS as the display system for his new workstation computers. The result was Display PostScript , or DPS. DPS added basic functionality to improve performance by changing many string lookups into 32 bit integers, adding support for direct output with every command, and adding functions to allow the GUI to inspect

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924-496: A series of dots to the printer using a series of escape sequences . These printer control languages varied from printer to printer, requiring program authors to create numerous drivers . Vector graphics printing was left to special-purpose devices, called plotters . Almost all plotters shared a common command language, HPGL , but were of limited use for anything other than printing graphics. In addition, they tended to be expensive and slow, and thus rare. Laser printers combine

1001-411: A series of dots, as defined by a font table inside the printer. As they grew in sophistication, dot matrix printers started including several built-in fonts from which the user could select, and some models allowed users to upload their own custom glyphs into the printer. Dot matrix printers also introduced the ability to print raster graphics . The graphics were interpreted by the computer and sent as

1078-518: A series of meetings in 1983, Jobs also repeatedly offered for Apple to buy Adobe outright, but the founders kept turning him down. In December 1983, the two companies finally signed off on the PostScript licensing deal, and Adobe had to shift focus immediately from high-end, high-resolution printing devices to the consumer-oriented Apple LaserWriter laser printer. At that time, the 300-dpi Canon laser printing engine to be used in LaserWriters

1155-503: A simpler language, similar to Interpress, called PostScript, which went on the market in 1984. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1983, Steve Jobs came to visit Adobe and was dazzled by PostScript's potential, especially for the new Macintosh computer he was developing at Apple . To John Sculley 's frustration, Jobs licensed the PostScript technology from Adobe by offering a $ 1.5 million advance against PostScript royalties, plus $ 2.5 million in exchange for 20 percent of Adobe shares. During

1232-463: A single control language that could be used on any brand of printer. PostScript went beyond the typical printer control language and was a complete programming language of its own. Many applications can transform a document into a PostScript program: the execution of which results in the original document. This program can be sent to an interpreter in a printer, which results in a printed document, or to one inside another application, which will display

1309-412: A suitable interpreter and then sent to a software rasterizer program, all inside the printer. To support this, the LaserWriter featured a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 12  MHz , 512 KB of workspace RAM , and a 1 MB frame buffer. At introduction, the LaserWriter had the most processing power in Apple's product line—more than the 8 MHz Macintosh. As a result, the LaserWriter

1386-660: A thousand dollars the added cost of PS was marginal. But, as printer mechanisms fell in price, the cost of implementing PS became too great a fraction of overall printer cost. In addition, with desktop computers becoming more powerful during the 1990s than their attached printers, it no longer made sense to offload the rasterization work onto the resource-constrained printer. By 2001, few low-end printer models came with onboard support for PostScript, largely due to growing competition from much cheaper non-PostScript inkjet printers, and new software-based methods to render PostScript images on computers, making them suitable for any printer. PDF ,

1463-544: A unifying warm gray color they called Platinum across its entire product line, which was to last for over a decade. The LaserWriter was also the first peripheral to use the LocalTalk connector and Apple's unified round AppleTalk Connector Family, which allowed any variety of mechanical networking systems to be plugged into the ports on the computers or printers. A common solution was the 3rd party PhoneNET which used conventional telephone cables for networking. Apple's RIP

1540-579: Is a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter sold by Apple, Inc. from 1985 to 1988. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker that operated on top of the graphical user interface of Macintosh computers, the LaserWriter was a key component at the beginning of the desktop publishing revolution. Laser printing traces its history to efforts by Gary Starkweather at Xerox in 1969, which resulted in

1617-579: Is a static data structure made for efficient access and embeds navigational information suitable for interactive viewing. PostScript is a Turing-complete programming language, belonging to the concatenative group of programming languages. It is an interpreted , stack-based language similar to Forth but with strong dynamic typing , data structures inspired by those found in Lisp , scoped memory and, since language level 2, garbage collection . The language syntax uses reverse Polish notation , which makes

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1694-440: Is implemented as a set of DLL and GPD files along with other printer-specific support files: Newer Unidrv -based printer drivers from some printer vendors, e.g. Hewlett-Packard , may contain many other support files to allow support for more printer-specific options. The Unidriver is also called the raster driver because it supports raster (bitmap) graphics printing and is compatible with many printers. This driver supports

1771-598: Is needed for such a printer, Ghostscript can be used. There are also a number of commercial PostScript interpreters, such as TeleType Co. 's T-Script or Brother 's BR-Script3 . PostScript became commercially successful due to the introduction of the graphical user interface (GUI), allowing designers to directly lay out pages for eventual output on laser printers. However, the GUIs' own graphics systems were generally much less sophisticated than PostScript; Apple's QuickDraw , for instance, supported only basic lines and arcs, not

1848-440: Is possible to write computer programs in PostScript just like any other programming language. A Hello World program , the customary way to show a small example of a complete program in a given language, might look like this in PostScript (level 2): or if the output device has a console PostScript uses the point as its unit of length. However, unlike some of the other versions of the point, PostScript uses exactly 72 points to

1925-407: Is that fonts do not scale linearly at small sizes and features of the glyphs will become proportionally too large or small and start to look displeasing. PostScript avoided this problem with the inclusion of font hinting , in which additional information is provided in horizontal or vertical bands to help identify the features in each letter that are important for the rasterizer to maintain. The result

2002-414: The HP LaserJet and other non-Postscript printers. Paired with the program Aldus PageMaker , the LaserWriter gave the layout editor an exact replica of the printed page. The LaserWriter offered a generally faithful proofing tool for preparing documents for quantity publication, and could print smaller quantities directly. The Mac platform quickly gained the favor of the emerging desktop-publishing industry,

2079-579: The Harlequin RIP , both by Global Graphics . A free software version, with several other applications, is Ghostscript . Several compatible interpreters are listed on the Undocumented Printing Wiki. Some basic, inexpensive laser printers do not support PostScript, instead coming with drivers that simply rasterize the platform's native graphics formats rather than converting them to PostScript first. When PostScript support

2156-535: The X11 system led to its introduction and widespread use on Sun systems, and NeWS never became widely used. The PDF and PostScript share the same imaging model and both documents are mutually convertible to each other. Both documents produce the same result when printed. The difference between the PDF and PostScript is that the PDF lacks the general-purpose programming language framework of the PostScript language. A PDF document

2233-601: The array and dictionary types, but cannot be declared to the type system, which sees them all only as arrays and dictionaries, so any further typing discipline to be applied to such user-defined "types" is left to the code that implements them. The character "%" is used to introduce comments in PostScript programs. As a general convention, every PostScript program should start with the characters "%!PS" as an interpreter directive so that all devices will properly interpret it as PostScript. Typically, PostScript programs are not produced by humans, but by other programs. However, it

2310-425: The "frame buffer", for the lowest resolution devices, 300 dpi), as more than 300 dpi of course required more RAM, and some LaserWriters were able to change between 300 dpi and 600 dpi, depending upon how much RAM was installed. 600 dpi, for example, required 6 MB of RAM, but 8 MB of RAM was more commonly found. At this point, Apple's LaserWriters were employing generic non-parity RAM, whereas HP's LaserJets, especially

2387-547: The LaserWriter II was designed to allow for complete replacement of the computer circuit board that operates the printer. Across all the different models, the print engine was the same. Three years later in 1991, two updated versions of the LaserWriter II were produced. To deliver higher performance, Apple eventually switched from the 68000 series to the Am29000 series of processors to drive later models, starting with

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2464-465: The LaserWriter at Apple's annual stockholder meeting on January 23, 1985. It was the first printer to ship with PostScript, sparking the desktop publishing (DTP) revolution in the mid-1980s. The original PostScript royalty was five percent of the list price for each laser printer sold, which was $ 350 of the original LaserWriter list price of $ 6,995, and such royalties provided nearly all of Adobe's income during its early years. (Apple later renegotiated

2541-465: The LaserWriter to the Mac over an RS-422 serial port. At 230.4 kbit / s LocalTalk was slower than the Centronics PC parallel interface, but allowed several computers to share a single LaserWriter. PostScript enabled the LaserWriter to print complex pages containing high-resolution bitmap graphics , outline fonts , and vector illustrations. The LaserWriter could print more complex layouts than

2618-422: The OpenType font. Adobe supported Type 1 fonts in its products until January 2023, when it fully removed support in favor of OpenType fonts. In the 1980s, Adobe drew most of its revenue from the licensing fees for their implementation of PostScript for printers, known as a raster image processor or RIP . As a number of new RISC -based platforms became available in the mid-1980s, some found Adobe's support of

2695-450: The PS system in the computer rather than the printer. This led to the natural evolution of PS from a printing system to one that could also be used as the host's own graphics language. There were numerous advantages to this approach; not only did it help eliminate the possibility of different output on screen and printer, but it also provided a powerful graphics system for the computer, and allowed

2772-423: The PostScript language was released to the market in 1984. The qualifier Level 1 was added when Level 2 was introduced. PostScript Level 2 was introduced in 1991, and included several improvements: improved speed and reliability, support for in-Raster Image Processing (RIP) separations, image decompression (for example, JPEG images could be rendered by a PostScript program), support for composite fonts , and

2849-512: The PostScript program is interpreted, the interpreter converts these instructions into the dots needed to form the output. For this reason, PostScript interpreters are occasionally called PostScript raster image processors , or RIPs. Almost as complex as PostScript itself is its handling of fonts . The font system uses the PS graphics primitives to draw glyphs as curves, which can then be rendered at any resolution . A number of typographic issues had to be considered with this approach. One issue

2926-479: The XPS Document format is used as a spool file format and as a document file format. PostScript PostScript ( PS ) is a page description language and dynamically typed , stack-based programming language . It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it can be used for many other purposes as well. PostScript

3003-410: The best features of both printers and plotters. Like plotters, laser printers offer high quality line art, and like dot-matrix printers, they are able to generate pages of text and raster graphics. Unlike either printers or plotters, a laser printer makes it possible to position high-quality graphics and text on the same page. PostScript made it possible to fully exploit these characteristics by offering

3080-454: The complex B-splines and advanced region filling options of PostScript. In order to take full advantage of PostScript printing, applications on the computers had to re-implement those features using the host platform's own graphics system. This led to numerous issues where the on-screen layout would not exactly match the printed output, due to differences in the implementation of these features. As computer power grew, it became possible to host

3157-413: The contract to pay a licensing fee based on volume of printers shipped.) The combination of technical merits and widespread availability made PostScript the language of choice for graphical output for printing applications. An interpreter (sometimes referred to as a RIP for Raster Image Processor) for the PostScript language was a common component of laser printers during the 1980s and 1990s. However,

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3234-475: The cost of implementation was high; computers output raw PS code that would be interpreted by the printer into a raster image at the printer's natural resolution. This required high performance microprocessors and ample memory . The LaserWriter used a 12 MHz Motorola 68000 , making it faster than any of the Macintosh computers to which it was attached. When the laser printer engines themselves cost over

3311-542: The diagram. Additionally, a set of "bindings" was provided to allow PS code to be called directly from the C programming language . NeXT used these bindings in their NeXTStep system to provide an object oriented graphics system. Although DPS was written in conjunction with NeXT, Adobe sold it commercially and it was a common feature of most Unix workstations in the 1990s. Sun Microsystems took another approach, creating NeWS . Instead of DPS's concept of allowing PS to interact with C programs, NeWS instead extended PS into

3388-465: The document on-screen. Since the document-program is the same regardless of its destination, it is called device-independent . PostScript is noteworthy for implementing on-the-fly rasterization in which everything, even text, is specified in terms of straight lines and cubic Bézier curves (previously found only in CAD applications), which allows arbitrary scaling, rotating and other transformations. When

3465-517: The entire "frame" could be contained within the available RAM ). In most cases, such RAM was fixed in size and was soldered to the logic board. In late PostScript Level 1, and in early PostScript Level 2, the RAM size was made variable and was generally extensible, through plug-in DIMMs, beyond the 2.0 to 2.5 MB minimum (0.5 to 1.0 MB for instructions, depending upon PostScript version, and 1.5 MB minimum for

3542-561: The existing proprietary color electronic prepress systems, then widely used for magazine production, through the introduction of smooth shading operations with up to 4096 shades of grey (rather than the 256 available in PostScript Level 2), as well as DeviceN, a color space that allowed the addition of additional ink colors (called spot colors ) into composite color pages. Prior to the introduction of Interpress and PostScript, printers were designed to print character output given

3619-420: The following features: To determine whether a driver is Unidrv -based, the following steps need to be taken on Windows: Starting with Windows Vista , Microsoft intends XPSDrv to succeed Unidrv. The XPSDrv printer driver extends Microsoft's GDI-based, printer driver architecture to support consuming Open XML Paper Specification (XPS) documents and is more modular and extensible. With an XPSDrv printer driver,

3696-429: The form mechanism for caching reusable content. PostScript 3 (Adobe dropped the "level" terminology in favor of simple versioning) came at the end of 1997, and along with many new dictionary-based versions of older operators, introduced better color handling and new filters (which allow in-program compression/decompression, program chunking, and advanced error-handling). PostScript 3 was significant in terms of replacing

3773-405: The inch. Thus: For example, in order to draw a vertical line of 4 cm length, it is sufficient to type: More readably and idiomatically, one might use the following equivalent, which demonstrates a simple procedure definition and the use of the mathematical operators mul and div : (Technically, most printers have a construction-implied unprintable margin around the physical borders of

3850-532: The landscape of computer desktop publishing. At the time, Apple planned to release a suite of AppleTalk products as part of the Macintosh Office , with the LaserWriter being only the first component. While competing printers and their associated control languages offered some of the capabilities of PostScript, they were limited in their ability to reproduce free-form layouts (as a desktop publishing application might produce), use outline fonts , or offer

3927-464: The level of detail and control over the page layout. HP's own LaserJet was driven by a simple page description language , known as Printer Command Language , or PCL. The version for the LaserJet, PCL4, was adapted from earlier inkjet printers with the addition of downloadable bitmapped fonts. It lacked the power and flexibility of PostScript until several upgrades provided some level of parity. It

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4004-633: The new machines to be lacking. This and issues of cost led to third-party implementations of PostScript becoming common, particularly in low-cost printers (where the licensing fee was the sticking point) or in high-end typesetting equipment (where the quest for speed demanded support for new platforms faster than Adobe could provide). At one point, Microsoft licensed to Apple a PostScript-compatible interpreter it had bought called TrueImage , and Apple licensed to Microsoft its new font format, TrueType . Apple ended up reaching an accord with Adobe and licensed genuine PostScript for its printers, but TrueType became

4081-451: The new printer. Arranging his own funding through a venture capital firm, Brainerd formed Aldus and began development of what would become PageMaker . The venture capital coined the term "desktop publishing" during this time. The LaserWriter was announced at Apple's annual shareholder meeting on January 23, 1985, the same day Aldus announced PageMaker. Shipments began in March 1985 at

4158-596: The ones which offered a plug-in PostScript interpreter card, required special parity-type PS/2 RAM modules with a "presence detect" function according to IBM specs. Building on the success of the original LaserWriter, Apple developed many further models. Later LaserWriters offered faster printing, higher resolutions , Ethernet connectivity, and eventually color output in the Color LaserWriter . To compete, many other laser printer manufacturers licensed Adobe PostScript for inclusion into their own models. Eventually

4235-419: The order of operations unambiguous, but reading a program requires some practice, because one has to keep the layout of the stack in mind. Most operators (what other languages term functions ) take their arguments from the stack, and place their results onto the stack. Literals (for example, numbers) have the effect of placing a copy of themselves on the stack. Sophisticated data structures can be built on

4312-494: The printers to be "dumb" at a time when the cost of the laser engines was falling. In a production setting, using PostScript as a display system meant that the host computer could render low-resolution to the screen, higher resolution to the printer, or simply send the PS code to a smart printer for offboard printing. However, PostScript was written with printing in mind, and had numerous features that made it unsuitable for direct use in an interactive display system. In particular, PS

4389-486: The problems in the OCF/Type 0 fonts , for addressing the complex Asian-language ( CJK ) encoding and very large character set issues. The CID-keyed font format can be used with the Type 1 font format for standard CID-keyed fonts, or Type 2 for CID-keyed OpenType fonts. To compete with Adobe's system, Apple designed their own system, TrueType , around 1991. Immediately following the announcement of TrueType, Adobe published

4466-542: The retail price of US$ 6,995, significantly more than the HP model. However, the LaserWriter featured AppleTalk support that allowed the printer to be shared among as many as sixteen Macs, meaning that its per-user price could fall to under $ 450, far less expensive than HP's less-advanced model. The combination of the LaserWriter, PostScript, PageMaker and the Mac's GUI and built-in AppleTalk networking would ultimately transform

4543-407: The same time-frame as Apple's LaserWriter, Adobe was licensing the very same version of PostScript to Apple's potential competitors (Apple's PostScript licensing terms were non-exclusive); however, all non-Apple licensees of PostScript generally employed one of Adobe's PostScript "reference models" (Atlas, Redstone, etc.) and even Linotype 's first image setter which featured PostScript employed such

4620-432: The sheet, and the 0 0 coordinates are calibrated to its corner, so you might have to use a different starting point to actually see something.) Most implementations of PostScript use single-precision reals (24-bit mantissa), so it is not meaningful to use more than 9 decimal digits to specify a real number, and performing calculations may produce unacceptable round-off errors. LaserWriter The LaserWriter

4697-464: The sophistication of the PostScript language, but without the standardized approach to hinting. The Type 2 font format was designed to be used with Compact Font Format (CFF) charstrings, and was implemented to reduce the overall font file size. The CFF/Type2 format later became the basis for handling PostScript outlines in OpenType fonts. The CID-keyed font format was also designed, to solve

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4774-619: The specification for the Type 1 font format. Retail tools such as Altsys Fontographer (acquired by Macromedia in January 1995, owned by FontLab since May 2005) added the ability to create Type 1 fonts. Since then, many free Type 1 fonts have been released; for instance, the fonts used with the TeX typesetting system are available in this format. In the early 1990s, there were several other systems for storing outline-based fonts, developed by Bitstream and Metafont for instance, but none included

4851-566: The standard outline font technology for both Windows and the Macintosh. Today, third-party PostScript-compatible interpreters are widely used in printers and multifunction peripherals (MFPs). For example, CSR plc 's IPS PS3 interpreter, formerly known as PhoenixPage, is standard in many printers and MFPs, including those developed by Hewlett-Packard and sold under the LaserJet and Color LaserJet lines. Other third-party PostScript solutions used by print and MFP manufacturers include Jaws and

4928-415: The standardization on Ethernet for connectivity and the ubiquity of PostScript undermined the unique position of Apple's printers: Macintosh computers functioned equally well with any Postscript printer. After the LaserWriter 8500, Apple discontinued the LaserWriter product line in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. In 1988, to address the need for both an affordable printer and a professional printer,

5005-476: The stem width of letters scale properly so that they look good at all resolutions. Their breakthrough was so important that Adobe has never patented the technology, in order to keep its details concealed as a trade secret . Paxton worked on several other related improvements, such as font hinting . Adobe was also responsible for porting PostScript to the Canon's Motorola 68000 chip. Apple and Adobe announced

5082-451: The text—typically in ASCII —as input. There were a number of technologies for this task, but most shared the property that the glyphs were physically difficult to change, as they were stamped onto typewriter keys, bands of metal, or optical plates. This changed to some degree with the increasing popularity of dot matrix printers . The characters on these systems were drawn as

5159-416: The upcoming Apple Macintosh computer. Meanwhile, John Warnock had left Xerox to found Adobe Systems to commercialize PostScript and AppleTalk in a laser printer they intended to market. Jobs was aware of Warnock's efforts, and upon his return to California he began convincing Warnock to allow Apple to license PostScript for a new printer that Apple would sell. Negotiations between Apple and Adobe over

5236-499: The use of PostScript began in 1983 and an agreement was reached in December 1983, one month before Macintosh was announced. Jobs eventually arranged for Apple to buy $ 2.5 million in Adobe stock. At about the same time, Jonathan Seybold ( John W. Seybold 's son) introduced Paul Brainerd to Apple, where he learned of Apple's laser printer efforts and saw the potential for a new program using the Mac's GUI to produce PostScript output for

5313-481: The very same LBP-CX form factor, although the external packaging was, for marketing purposes, somewhat different. Since the cost of a LaserWriter was several times that of a dot-matrix impact printer , some means to share the printer with several Macs was desired. LANs were complex and expensive, so Apple developed its own networking scheme, LocalTalk . Based on the AppleTalk protocol stack , LocalTalk connected

5390-488: Was also one of Apple's most expensive offerings. For implementation purposes, the LaserWriter employed a small number of medium-scale-integration Monolithic Memories PALs , and no custom LSI , whereas the LaserJet employed a large number of small-scale-integration Texas Instruments 74-Series gates, and one custom LSI. The LaserWriter was, thereby, in the same form factor (for its RIP ), able to provide much greater function, and, indeed, much greater performance, all within

5467-401: Was based on the idea of collecting up PS commands until the showpage command was seen, at which point all of the commands read up to that point were interpreted and output. In an interactive system, this was clearly not appropriate, nor did PS have any sort of interactivity built in; for example, supporting hit detection for mouse interactivity obviously did not apply when PS was being used on

5544-408: Was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock , Charles Geschke , Doug Brotz, Ed Taft and Bill Paxton from 1982 to 1984. The most recent version, PostScript 3, was released in 1997. The concepts of the PostScript language were seeded in 1976 by John Gaffney at Evans & Sutherland , a computer graphics company. At that time, Gaffney and John Warnock were developing an interpreter for

5621-474: Was effectively a simplification of the PS system to store outline information only, as opposed to being a complete language (PDF is similar in this regard). Adobe would then sell licenses to the Type 1 technology to those wanting to add hints to their own fonts. Those who did not license the technology were left with the Type 3 Font (also known as PostScript Type 3 Font , PS3 or T3 ). Type 3 fonts allowed for all

5698-443: Was of its own design, and was implemented using few ICs, including PALs for most combinatorial logic; with the subsystem timing DRAM refreshing, and rasterization functions being implemented in very few medium-scale-integration PALs. Apple's competitors (i.e., QMS , NEC , and others) generally used a variation of one of Adobe's RIPs with their large quantity of small-scale-integration (i.e., Texas Instruments ' 7400 series) ICs. In

5775-439: Was seen as good enough only for proof printing (i.e., for crude rough drafts of material whose final drafts would be sent to professional high-resolution devices), but Jobs presented Adobe with the challenge of making PostScript render high-quality output to such a low-resolution device (which for most consumers would be their only printing device). In response, Warnock and Brotz solved the so-called "appearance problem" of making

5852-410: Was significantly better-looking fonts even at low resolution. It had formerly been believed that hand-tuned bitmap fonts were required for this task. At the time, the technology for including these hints in fonts was carefully guarded, and the hinted fonts were compressed and encrypted into what Adobe called a Type 1 Font (also known as PostScript Type 1 Font , PS1 , T1 or Adobe Type 1 ). Type 1

5929-461: Was some time before similar products became available on other platforms, by which time the Mac had ridden the desktop publishing market to success. The LaserWriter used the same Canon CX printing engine as the HP LaserJet, and as a consequence early LaserWriters and LaserJets shared the same toner cartridges and paper trays. PostScript is a complete programming language that has to be run in

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