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*NIX Ripping Solutions For Plotters

Posted by timothy on from the let-one-rip dept.

haogemenr writes: "I work in an all Apple architecture firm, but we have a Linux box that primarily functions as a DSL router. The options for large format plotter drivers in the Macintosh world are few and relatively expensive. PostScript output devices are a great, but expensive solution and HP doesn't provide any Mac-friendly drivers for non-PostScript plotters. What are the *nix solutions? You can write PostScript from CAD application using a generic PostScript driver, but converting PostScript to an RTL file or HPGL2 file is necessary for lots of older plotters. I've heard of an application named makertl, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere. What do Unix folks use for large format image processing?"

39 comments

  1. Possible solutions... by Thauma · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well these are *nix solutions, but they may work for your office.

    MacPlot is a commecial product from www.microspot.co.uk which can act as a network based RIP server for the mac...

    HP has their own RIP software for windows that is packaged with the HP 500 PS. (There was also a version for the 455CA and 488).

    There is a company that sells some very high end RIP software called PosterJet. (www.posterjet.de) which I belive will turn a windows box into a RIP server.

    Of course, the best solution would be to use a printer that was supported on the Mac!!!

    I know the people that do VectorWorks (probably the best all around Mac CAD package) made a viewer available for free. Just download the viewer onto a windows machine and use the HP drivers. Hell, this would probably work under WINE as well.

    If your not using VectorWorks, you could also just print to a PDF file on a network voulme (print2pdf from www.jwwalker.com is great for this), and again have a windows machine just output and delete everything in that directory every few minutes.

    Jeez!

    1. Re:Possible solutions... by Thauma · · Score: 1

      hmm typical of me... should read "these arn't *nix soultions..."

      Of course, you could always wait for Apple to support CUPS printing from Aqua apps... right like that will ever happen.

    2. Re:Possible solutions... by Ster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      CUPS is part of Jaguar (Mac OS X v. 10.2), which has gone GM and will be released on August 24. They (correctly) decided the old print system in X, well, sucks and needs a total re-write.

      So yeah, it'll happen in 20 days. :-)

      -Ster

    3. Re:Possible solutions... by Thauma · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Correct, CUPS is supposed to be in Jaguar, however it does not allow for Mac applications to print using it. They have not created any kind of PrintCenter/CUPS bridge that will take MacOS Quartz based PDF print output and send it to a CUPS printer.

    4. Re:Possible solutions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's the purpose of CUPS in quartz then?

    5. Re:Possible solutions... by wrhix · · Score: 1

      Huh? Why would Apple include CUPS if GUI apps couldn't print via it. For their legion of command line users?

      Since Mac applications can already spool PostScript and send it directly to LPR printers and CUPS is just an extention of this mechanism, what make you say that Mac applications won't be able to spool PostScript to CUPS servers?

    6. Re:Possible solutions... by foniksonik · · Score: 3, Informative

      CUPS is in Jaguar.

      CUPS is implemented by the driver not by PrintCenter. Jaguar provides APIs for 3rd parties to configure CUPS. From what i can tell by reading the docs CUPS won't 'just work' it has to be supported by the printer, again, via the drivers. Once the printer is supported then PrintCenter takes over for management of individual prints and the queue.

      CUPS support is meant to enable a faster driver development cycle for printer manufacturers so they don't have to write specifically for the Mac... which gives Mac users a much larger selection of printers w/o added cost.

      Quick blurb of revelance:

      "The CUPS Imaging library provides functions for managing large images, doing colorspace conversion and color management, scaling images for printing, and managing raster page streams. It is used by the CUPS image file filters, the PostScript RIP, and all raster printers drivers. "

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  2. Ghostscript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The standard unix tool for processing postscript / pdf files is Ghostscript. It can interpret ps files and generate output in a variety of formats. According to the Ghostscript web page, the Uniprint driver can be used to generate RTL output. HTH.

    http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/gnu/dev510.htm

    1. Re:Ghostscript by dougmc · · Score: 3, Insightful
      That would be nasty.

      Ghostscript (gs) basically converts postscript to a bitmap, then uses whatever drivers it has to convert that to the needed format.

      This works reasonably well for pictures and stuff, but for a plotter this would be iffy at best. When you actually printed it out, rather than drawing the lines as designed, the pen would trace a line across the page, go down a tiny bit, trace another line, go down a tiny bit, trace another line, etc. As needed, the pen would be raised and dropped, probably drawing lots of dots. Eventually, it would probably draw the picture ok, but it could take hours, and would wear out your plotter.

      This all assumes that what I know about plotters hasn't become totally obsolete. When I worked with plotters like 15 years ago, that's how they worked. Maybe they're fancier now.

      To put this in video game terms -- think a Vectrex vs an Atari 2600. The Vectrex draws lines, and they look perfect (in arcade terms, think the original Star Wars game, think Asteroids, Star Castles.) The 2600 drew bitmaps -- less precise, but more flexible (think the arcade Space Invaders.)

    2. Re:Ghostscript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember also that if you're going to use a tool which does involve a bitmap -- how many bits are needed for that 7x10 foot plotter with 1/500th of an inch positioning? In color?
      (Yes, there is a difference between trying to process a photograph or a bunch of lines. If the tool which uses bitmaps is doing things such as arranging its data so it is not actually using bits for empty space.)

  3. Even though I'm not sure what you are asking: by qurob · · Score: 0, Troll

    I work in an all Apple architecture firm, but we have a Linux box that primarily functions as a DSL router.

    First off, ditch all the Macs.

    Are you thinking of running your arch. software on Linux?

    Or just using the Linux box to serve up plotter jobs?

    1. Re:Even though I'm not sure what you are asking: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      First off, ditch all the Macs.

      It's a wonder people even bother with Ask Slashdot when they get "helpful" responses like this.

    2. Re:Even though I'm not sure what you are asking: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sound solution though, don't you think? Zeriously, you Apple retards need to lighten up a bit..

    3. Re:Even though I'm not sure what you are asking: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Retards? Oh behave! Try licking the other side of the stamp one of these days ;)

  4. First, check the specs on your Linux box by foo12 · · Score: 1

    Seriously. It may be fine for running as a firewall/router, but a RIP server requires more power and RAM than your standard "well i have this spare pentium box" router. A place I used to work used a dual P3 with boatloads of RAM and fast disk space as a RIP and even it got bogged down by large and/or complex files.

    And what's the model number of your plotter?

    1. Re:First, check the specs on your Linux box by jbolden · · Score: 1

      I don't get the impression this guy really needs a RIP he seems to need file conversion so the general ghostscript type solution would work. If he neededs the speed then the money wouldn't have been a problem.

  5. ps2hpgl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I did a google search, and ps2hpgl can be downloaded from mathworks.com. I guess that was too much work.

    1. Re:ps2hpgl by danielrose · · Score: 1

      Does it convert to HPGL2 Lite? That is what the base model plotters use. You need to buy a decent version to get full HPGL2.

      --
      i hate pansy republicans
    2. Re:ps2hpgl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Whine whine whine

      whiner: I want something to convert X to Y!
      human:Here, Use this, it works.
      whiner: No, I know I said X to Y but I really meant X to Z!

    3. Re:ps2hpgl by danielrose · · Score: 1

      But.. I didn't say I want to convert X to Y, i'm just picking up a possible problem with someone elses suggestion.

      --
      i hate pansy republicans
  6. Oil & Gas by larien · · Score: 2
    I work in an Oil & Gas company, so there are a few bits of software for plotting, but they're all commercial. However, Justplot (from Justcroft) is the main software, but some others use Zeh plotting.

    Aside from that, I think CUPS has some hooks for plotters, but I've never looked into it seriously.

  7. Buy a PS plotter.. by danielrose · · Score: 1

    If you need to print from a system which only outputs in PS, buy the version which supports it. It's also no good buying a low end plotter, and converting to HPGL2 and plotting, as the low end plotters usually only support GL/2 Lite. It is well worth spending the extra cash to get the PS option.

    --
    i hate pansy republicans
  8. Ghostscript + ps2hpgl by Kvorg · · Score: 1

    Folowing the Google hint above, you can find useful instructions and a shell script at http://calmarc3.cchem.berkeley.edu/archives/bum/96 /archive/0320.html

    The ps2hpgl converter is part of the never versions of ghostscript (see homepage at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ or go for commercial Allading version if your company feels like supporting the effort a bit http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/). I did not test it myself, unfortunately, so you are on your own.

    Of course, both versions of Ghostscript work nicely in Mac OS X, but there are binary distributions for Mac OS 9 too. So no problems if your linux router has spool-space or ram problems.

    And a note to Mac bashers: Macs run Unix and GNU tools these days, were you living under a rock?

    --
    -Kvorg
  9. cups and linuxprinting by frankske · · Score: 1

    First check Linux printing if your plotter is listed. If it is, use Cups...

  10. Stop focusing on Linux by hatless · · Score: 2

    Get a commercial RIP and plotter combination made to work together that has client drivers for the kinds of machines you print from. In the world of graphics printers and RIP units, that almost always means Postscript. Live with it and budget for it and stop trying to find novel and unusual uses for Linux for its own sake in a running business. Use Linux when Linux is the right solution for something.

    While you might be able to build your own "solution" with Ghostscript and who knows what else, you're going to be on your own if lines don't intersect the way they're supposed to and labels show up in the wrong font and layers aren't rendered in the right z-order. I'll bet architects, engineers and drafters don't like that and won't be as excited as you are about your $6000 "savings" if they're sending jobs over to Kinko's at ten at night because the RIP on their $8000 plotter is an unsupported piece of garbage sending generic Postscript or converted HPGL to a fussy device that works best with output massaged to address its quirks.

    Like I said, pick a solution built around a plotter that meets the users' needs and a supported RIP solution that has a supported driver for that very plotter and client drivers, and PPDs for the OS of the machines that will be outputting to it. If the only things that meet these criteria use Postscript, then welcome to the world of Postscript. While you're at it, if it's a critical device for the running of the business, get a same-day on-site support contract for both pieces.

    The only advice I'll give beyond that is to get a RIP device built around an embedded device OS or Unix (Linux, BSD, QNX, Mac OS X, whatever), or at least an NT variant. You can expect reasonable stability and uptime that way. I'd avoid any RIP devices or software built around MacOS 8.x and 9.x. In my experience they freeze up far too often. No RIP should ever freeze, but while once every few weeks is manageable, daily (or worse) freezes and crashes are a bit much. You don't want to become too familiar with your RIP vendor's regional field support engineer.

    The choice of OS behind a RIP device should have nothing to do with the OS of the client machines; it's just an appliance connected to your printer. A RIP device is single-purpose, and any expectation of using a RIP to do double duty as something else is a terrible, terrible idea under most normal circumstances.

    When should you use free stuff on Linux for this? Go for it if you find a solution with accompanying Mac drivers that has an active user community and mailing lists filled with enthusiastic testimonials from people who use it commercially in a production environment with the very plotter you plan to use and output from Macs running a similar set of applications.

    1. Re:Stop focusing on Linux by haogemenr · · Score: 1

      It continually amazes me that in the global world that comprises the internet, some people can continue to be so egocentric. Get outside the box dude. Not everyone can just sit back in their Herman Miller office chair in their air conditioned office and order up expensive solutions to their problems. One hell of a lot of the planet has to be a little more creative in solving some of lifes little challenges.

      I've been working in Lijiang, China since a 7.0 earthquake devastated the area in 1986, destroying nearly 200,000 homes. I make about $300 a month, making expensive solutions, well, no solution at all. The company that wrote our present (6 year old) driver, GDT Softworks (Powerplot driver) no longer maintains/improves the product. It works, but it's not great. Tell me, where would the world of computers, or damn near anything else for that matter be, if we accepted the status quo. No, I don't spend my employer's precious money searching for solutions, I search on my own precious time. Forget about going out and buying a $6000 professional RIP solution. I'll be able to afford that on the 12th...of never.

      A hearty xie xie (thank you) to all the posters who took some of their precious time to attempt to be helpful.

      One of every 8 people walking the face of the earth is a Chinese peasant. While they may be hungry themselves, they would share a meal with you. Can't we be a little more generous in brain-storming solutions and not try to frame the rest of world's problems in our narrow little world?

      Oh yeah, the nearest Kinkos is uh, about 8000 miles away!

    2. Re:Stop focusing on Linux by hatless · · Score: 2

      Well, your company is a private architectural firm that has Macs and large-format plotters so it would seem to follow that something that costs about the same as two more secondhand two-year-old G4's might be within your price range, even if the CAD software you're using didn't cost Western prices. Believe it or not, most computerized architectural firms--even those in the developing world and poor, remote areas--are for-profit ventures with customers who are building modern structures and thus pay fees--maybe not Western-level fees, but not ten dollars and a dozen jars of pickled vegetables either.

      My experience isn't with plotters; it's with color laser printers and mopiers, and I know from that experience that using the wrong PPD or the wrong print driver or even last year's PPD with this year's design software, to talk to an actively-supported commercial RIP unit will result in output that's off--color that's off, alignment that's off, margins that are off, and line art that's not layered properly. Hell, I've seen that enough when systems with mismatched drivers and PPDs are outputting word processing files and spreadsheets to ordinary workgroup black-and-white laser printers. So to me the idea of feeding output from advanced commercial CAD software to a wildly expensive printer with cheap, hacked-together software in between seems like unnecessary pain. Except in your situation where weeks of extra work and even paying a local C programmer to hack Postscript filters actually makes economic sense, since you make it sound like your firm's billables are low even for the local market. And plots that don't look great will be acceptable as long as they're readable.

      As someone who's also worked in the developing world for local companies, I understand where you're coming from, and frankly your question would have made a whole lot more sense if you provided this bit of information in the first place. Without that context--that the Macs are probably several years old and the plotter may well be ten years old and your copies of AutoCAD or whatever are either also quite old or maybe not paid for and the DSL line you have costs as much as a draftsperson's salary--you just sound like someone trying to cut corners when you've already spent big money on the other pieces. Take off the hair shirt, dude.

  11. Colorbus by green+pizza · · Score: 2

    We have two RIP servers in our office, both made and packaged by Colorbus. One is NT based and runs on what looks to be a rebadged Intergraph/SGI Zx10. The other is unix based and is a bit faster, it runs on an SGI O2 (although most of the work is being done by a PCI card). I have no idea what these cost, but I'd imagine they wern't cheap...

  12. Um... by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 2

    Large-format plotters are few and relatively expensive. Why on earth would you spend $100,000 on a plotter and then become all cheap-ass when it came time to hook it up to a plot server?

    Shell out the money for something that will work properly. Don't waste your employer's time and money trying to find an open-source "solution", and, if there's a payware UNIX solution, make sure it's fully supported by your plotter vendor.

    Do not skimp on stuff that matters. It's like buying a Ferrari but not being able to afford the racing gasoline.

    - A.P.

    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
    1. Re:Um... by Casca · · Score: 2

      Racing gasoline? Ah fuck, that explains it.

      --
      Casca
    2. Re:Um... by R2.0 · · Score: 1

      I don't think a "small" architectural firm has a $100k plotter. Probably an older, maybe second hand one - just like the original post implied.

      --
      "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
    3. Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      $100K? Nope. HP makes a half-dozen or so 36" inkjet plotters under $10K, and you can pick up pretty nice used ones for $2k-$5k on ebay. Now you might end up spending $100K/year on ink cartridges, but *somebody* has to keep Carly's G-IV in Jet-A.

      I've got a plotter at work (HP755CM), fed by non-general-purpose commercial software (Cadence Raptor), but I'd love to have a general-purpose Postscript->optimized-RTL path for it without having to touch Windows.

      A quick Google search shows there are folks using Ghostscript "uniprint" drivers for DesignJets, and there is ppm2rtl, which looks pretty interesting.

      -Jay-

    4. Re:Um... by dohcvtec · · Score: 1

      Large-format plotters are few and relatively expensive
      Uhh.. no. Large format plotters are produced en masse and range anywhere in price from $1500 to, like you say, $100,000. Plus, it really depends on what the architects are doing with the plotter. We didn't get this information from the submitter, but architects use plotters for generally either layouts/details, which are simple line drawings, or renderings, which are full color high-resolution plots. I suspect most firms use primarily the former. If the submitter worked for a large firm that did spend "$100,000 on a plotter " he probably wouldn't be asking Slashdot for help finding a cheap solution. However, he's obviously working with an HP plotter and, to my knowledge, HP doesn't make the really high-end plotters.

      --
      -- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
    5. Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's hope it's not a real racing Ferrari and actually needs alcohol.

  13. ESP Print Pro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Several effects studios use this with network attached HP Plotters and Large format canon printers.

    www.easysw.com/printpro

  14. Brisque by xrayspx · · Score: 2

    Something tells me it ain't cheap, but this is swell and runs on Unix. My company had a loaner on an older RS6000 running AIX.

    --
    I like music
  15. Image Alchemy - HandMade Software by caseymj · · Score: 1

    I've used a nice *NIX application called Image Alchemy for RIP processing. Check it out at Handmade Software, Inc.

  16. Vector Handling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    If we're using these plotters for line drawings, that is vector graphics.

    Check out the Vector Graphics Foundry at SourceForge. Assorted tools.

    I just saw something else... Netscape>Help>About Plugins>Netscape Netcenter Plugins>Tools>Find Plugins>Linux>Search

    XVIEW Plug-in By Fischer Computertechnik GmbH

    With XVIEW Plug-in you can view your TIFF, CALCOMP, BMP, HPGL, HPGL/2, Formtec, VGA and PCX Pictures in the IExplorer or Netscape Browser. With a right mouse click you get a menue where you have a lot of features like zooming, panning, printing anf rotation. XVIEW supports also very large engineering drawings. Download a demo and test XVIEW Plug-in.

    Support MIME types: image/tiff, image/tif, image/hpgl, image/hpg, image/bmp, image/pcx, image/cal

    Support file extensions: .tiff, .tif, .hpgl, .hpg, .pcx, .cal


    I don't know if they have what is needed here.
  17. There is RIP-software, just ask.... by Lars.O.G. · · Score: 1

    Hi!

    I am working here at the student's computer lab at the university of technology, Darmstadt. We have a lot of software in use, mainly on Mac and Windows-PC.

    As we have a wide range of software (CAD, modelers, dtp, photoshop etc), we need a common base for all this, and so we only print postscript (ps, eps, pdf) and tiff, all in cmyk.

    We have printed a lot on a large format postscript processor called Macrip, owned by Macron AG (www.macron-ag.de). Macrip runs on Solaris / Sparc and Linux / intel, in fact, it is ghostscript-based, and gives great results regarding speed, color and stability. It would be the perfect solution... but... at the moment, Macron sells it only on Windows... a "hack" running in a unix-environment on Windows NT.. :-( In fact, that's what people buy at the moment. The current version is called Jack the Rip (www.jack-the-rip.com), it's quite an improvement regarding color, features and printer drivers.

    Maybe there will be a Solaris version in future, one should simply ask... if they see there is enough interest, it would be almost no work to bring Ghostscript, Apache, Perl and their own things back into a real unix environment... (Linux, Solaris,...)

    CU, Lars O. Grobe.