[Info-vax] Direct print of PDF files on PDF compatible printers.

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <7921c9dc-3489-4673-83fa-1a5db6229f7an at googlegroups.com>,
gah4 <gah4 at u.washington.edu> writes: 

> > Some of the Xerox laser printer models support direct print of PDF files.

I asked some similar questions here almost a year ago.  In the end, I
went for a Brother LED printer.  It will print PDF but (as far as I can
figure out) not from VMS (but trying results in a message saying that
directly printing PDF is not supported, so it knows that it is a PDF
file).  From Apple devices it prints PDF fine.  It does print PostScript
directly.  Since all PDF files I produce on VMS come from PostScript, I
can just print the PostScript.  Other PDF files I can print from the
iPad (if on VMS, just access it via a web browser). 

> As well as I know it, PDF is a subset of PS.

Yes, but also compressed.

> Enough of a subset that there is an automated process to convert
> PDF into PS, and the program pdftops to do it. 

Or GhostScript:

$  IF P1 .EQS. "" THEN GOTO USAGE
$  IF F$PARSE(P1,,,"TYPE") .EQS. "." THEN P1 = P1 + ".PS"
$  IF P2 .EQS. "" THEN P2 = F$PARSE(P1,,,"NAME") + ".PDF"
$  IF F$PARSE(P2,,,"TYPE") .EQS. "." THEN P2 = P2 + ".PDF"
$  GS "-dNOPAUSE" "-sDEVICE=pdfwrite" "-dBATCH" "-sOutputFile=''P2'" 'P1'
$  EXIT
$USAGE:
$  TYPE SYS$INPUT

P1: PostScript file (required), default type .PS
P2: PDF file (optional), default type .PDF, default name <name_of_P1>.PDF
$  EXIT

> Are there printers that support PDF, but not PS?

My wife bought a (now defunct) cheap Canon bubblejet printer which 
printed PDF fine but I couldn't figure out how to print PostScript on 
it.