tlug: Printer Drivers: gs vs win95

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stone <sstone@example.com> writes:

    Scott> On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Kei Furuuchi wrote:
    >> negative compromising statement that GS driver is inferior to
    >> Windows

    Scott> Basically this is true for many of the popular printers in
    Scott> Japan.  If you have an HP inkjet or laserjet, gs works
    Scott> great.  PostScript printers also work great.  The problem
    Scott> you run into is with some of the popular Japanese non-PS
    Scott> laser printers, and some of the popular japanese inkjets,
    Scott> like the Epson Stylus.  YOu can fix that by simply
    Scott> compiling in the gs driver (it's not, by default...), but
    Scott> it does take some tweaking, etc.

That's not a Linux or Ghostscript issue.  That's a distribution issue.
If the Japanese distributions don't handle that issue, shame on them
for not serving their user population properly.  (It is not hard to
write a Ghostscript driver, either, if one doesn't exist for your
machine.  Been there.  Done that.)  But I thought that was one of the
advantages to VFlib?[a]

    Scott> 1.  Printers come with win95 drivers.  Note the lack of
    Scott> Linux support from the hardware manufacturers.

Bullpucky.  The hardware manufacturers support Ghostscript.  Unevenly,
of course.  But go read the Ghostscript driver sources sometime, with
specific emphasis on the authors and maintainers.  Peter Deutsch (the
Ghost@example.com) and Adobe are on fairly friendly terms.  I believe
he is also working directly with HP on the implementation of HPGL
frontends for Ghostscript (ie, plug-and-play with the Postscript
frontend, using the same printer drivers).

    Scott> 2.  Linux distributions are limited to gs 3.x, due to that
    Scott> painfully stupid Alladin copyright that prevents us and
    Scott> other distributors from putting newer, better versions of
    Scott> ghostscript into linux distributions.

Have you (== PHT) requested permission from Aladdin directly and been
turned down?  I've never asked Peter about Linux distributions
directly.  However, we have discussed freeware licensing issues.  I
don't think he has any problem with mere aggregation on a CD _if you
have permission_, but I could be wrong.  The Aladdin copyright was and
is quite a painful choice for Peter, by the way, as it forced him to
split with RMS, which decreases the usefulness of Ghostscript to
individuals.

You should also (possibly) direct some criticism at Stallman himself.
Peter was evidently willing to permit Ghostscript to remain in GNU
archives under the Aladdin license (and thus he evidently did _not_
object to aggregation into CD archives and OS distributions), but
Stallman refused and booted (modern) Ghostscript out of the GNU
family.[b]

The point of the Aladdin license, since you evidently don't know the
history, is to prevent the "mere aggregation" of Ghostscript _in ROM_
in printers and faxes, _which is permitted by the GPL_.[c]  Peter is
actively developing various specific capabilities under contract from
various hardware and software manufacturers; he feels bound, both
economically and ethically, not to release these supported
developments to those manufacturers' rivals for free.  Given the
openness of Ghostscript development, it's quite easy to get your hands
on a beta, which would permit irresponsible fly-by-night vendors to
get those capabilities on the market before Peter wants to release
them.  After all, those vendors are only required to promise upgrades
by the GPL, and Peter will make them available.

    Scott> Anyhow, let's try and avoid future anti-Win95 flame
    Scott> threads, or actually any flame threads at all, since that

"Win95 sucks."  Hmm.  Barely room temperature.  No flames there.

Advocacy != flames.

    Scott> considerably more market share, and it's better to address
    Scott> it than to vilify Win95.

But it's important to criticize Win95, too.  At least in the service
of avoiding the same mistakes for Linux.  And vilification is
something that any user, including newbies, can help with ;-)  Even
after a few beers.

    Scott> That's what the nomikais are for, anyway, since you can
    Scott> flame people and then blame it on the beer :)

Poor, poor, Scott.  What do you blame it on, then?  :-)

Footnotes: 
[a]  Why the heck hasn't this been integrated into the main
Ghostscript distribution?  Does anybody know?  There _is a specific
API_ for platform fonts (X and TrueType are both supported), which
would be the natural way to go, rather than maintaining Japan-localized
distributions of Ghostscript.

[b]  Stallman apparently did this on legal advice suggesting that it
could weaken the GPL with respect to other software in the GNU
archive, so it's not clear to me that Stallman did a bad thing.  I
wish he hadn't, though.

[c]  Stallman does not have a problem with telling other people that
protecting their intellectual property rights is wrong.  :-(

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