Short:        PGS3 arexx script - Print with GS/Turboprint
Author:       Riedelbeck@online-service.de (Stephan Riedelbeck)
Uploader:     Riedelbeck online-service de (Stephan Riedelbeck)
Type:         text/dtp
Version:      1.1
Architecture: generic

ABOUT

This arexx script is for getting a good colour printing with Turboprint.

With Pagestream and the preference printer you get only 4096 colors (12Bit).
IrseeSoft had announced a better driver but until now it's not available.

If you use the Epson driver the colors are sometimes to light or dark
and the dithering is only Floyd-Steinberg.

So I tried Ghostscript and with the scripts you get a very good color
output (dithering and color as good as Windows95 driver).
I didn't use the ghostscript internal drivers because they have the
same problems like the epson or preference driver.

Another benefit is that you can even print EPS files. With the preference
or Epson driver it's not possible.

REQUIREMENTS

- PageStream3
- Ghostscript 5.1 (from Aminet gfx/show) properly installed
- Turboprint 6 and Grafikpublisher properly installed
- A color printer (like Epson Stylus Color 600)
- Enough harddisk space (40-50MB) for temporary files of Grafikpublisher

USAGE

- Execute the install script
- Open Pagestream
- Open the script window
- Click on the arrow in the upper right corner
- Append the file PageStream-Script from the ghostscript:script directory
- Click on the arrow again and save the scripts
- Insert a new Tool in the Toolbar and attach the Print-Ghostscript script
  or open the file Ghostscript-Tool in the settings window and save the new
  settings.


How it works

The script starts the ghostscript programm and then
loads the printer preference file "Ghostscript-defs". Then the
file is printed to pipe:. Ghostscript loads all data from pipe: and
saves an pcx-file for each page in the ghostscript:spool directory. It's done in
360x360 dpi resolution. I think this is a good choice because with higher
resolution the printing gets very slow and the Grafikpublisher doesn't work
with a PCX-file in 720x720dpi resolution (needs about 150MB harddisk space
and the height is totaly wrong).
After that the Grafikpublisher prints all files in the directory. The margins
are optimized for the Epson Stylus 600 and DINA4 paper.
For other printers it's possible that you have to adjust the margins.
It's done in the file gs-pcx-pipe.rexx with the command -a30,40...
The two values adjust how many pixels are cut from pcx-file to get
a correct alignment. It depends on the PPD-file and your printer.
After printing the pcx-files are deleted.

PRINTING

For printing you have only to click on the icon in the toolbar or choose
Print-Ghostscript in the script menu.

History
V1.0    12-6-98 First release
V1.1    28-6-98 Added printrequester like internal requester
                Supported language: English and German
                Changed used ppd-file because linotype-ppd doesn't support
                mirror and negative printing

Known Bugs
- Printing even pages doesn't work (Pagestream bug)