User`s guide

PShop User’s Guide - 1
Chapter 3: Introduction
Overview
The growth in the popularity of UNIX for business, scientific, web-based and
other specialized applications has its origins in the mid 1980’s. It was at this time
that the first RISC processors appeared and inexpensive, powerful workstations
were “invented.” The introduction of the first Adobe PostScript laser printers
took place about the same time. Before PostScript was available, the popular
applications that produced formatted output had to provide a great many drivers,
one for each of the many printer protocols that existed at the time. Developers of
UNIX applications were quickly convinced of the efficacy of PostScript because
its advantage is essentially in embedding the printer-specific driver within the
printer. A UNIX application could then generate either plain ASCII text or
PostScript output and have truly universal printer applicability.
In the years since its introduction, PostScript has become widely accepted.
Almost without exception, it is the only kind of formatted printer output that
virtually all UNIX applications support. UNIX applications are generally
insensitive to the cost premium arising from having PostScript in their printers
but there are many applications today for which the printer-resident PostScript
capability is either prohibitively expensive, or simply not available. These
instances tend to occur at the lowest and highest ends of the printer capability and
cost spectrum.
Vividata’s solution is PShop, an integrated UNIX printing facility. Providing a
host-based PostScript Raster Image Processor (i.e. “software RIP”), it includes
everything else needed to get a user’s applications output printed with the
greatest ease, speed, and quality to the supported printers.
Ease of use is facilitated by PShop’s automatic recognition of the print job type.
The print job types can be mixed and matched in any order with no special action
by the user. PShop automatically detects ASCII text, PostScript print jobs and
image files of numerous popular formats.
High Speed is achieved by PShop in several ways. The RIP is host-resident, and
therefore runs PostScript on the workstation’s CPU which is much faster than the