(no subject)

[toothycat]

I don't know whether it's Adobe or the people who write printer drivers to blame here, but...

Seriously. I know the device prints black dots on a regular grid. I know the device's resolution. I supply an image, of that resolution, consisting of nothing but completely black dots on a completely white background. I don't want anything clever done to it. I don't want this image to be scaled, "enhanced", downsampled before being halftoned, or otherwise postprocessed in any way. I just want the pattern of black dots I supplied to be dumbly printed verbatim.

My old 24-pin dot matrix printer could do this. My second-hand Laserjet can do this. Morag's cheapo inkjet can do this. Xerox's £20000 laser printers, it appears, cannot.

Is it really so bloody hard?

Comments

[emperor]

Can you talk postscript to this device?

[toothycat]

I can't, alas, talk directly to this device. It is housed in a small print shop that will remain nameless. They get files from us on disc, which they feed into their print queue through some mechanism. Hitherto we have been sending them PDF, which they print using the Adobe reader, with strict instructions from us to make sure none of the "scale to fit page" or similar boxes are ticked.

[samholloway.livejournal.com]

In that case, can you send them .ps instead of .pdf? Adobe's PDF contains enough bumpf that can wrap around genuine PostScript and cause confusion, whereas raw PS has less that can be misinterpreted.

You may still come unstuck, though - too many printer drivers are just Too Complex these days. Oh for those Epson-compatible days.

[soundslikebuuu.livejournal.com]

Is it by chance my comic? XD Or one of the books? :D

[toothycat]

It's LFTS, of all things. I don't know what they've changed since the last time it was printed, but, well, something's broke.

Meh, we'll sort it eventually I'm sure.