PostScript Driver Setup Notes

To prepare for printing in Colour PostScript, please read the following notes. They are aimed towards people who need a facility for producing generic Color PostScript which can be viewed or printed to any PostScript printer, rather than producing device-specific PostScript for a single printer. But much of the information is useful in either situation.

• For first time use on a Microsoft Windows system, you should install a generic Color PostScript printer driver. This is normal practice on Windows for a new printer. A PostScript printer driver for a monochrome printer or the wrong colour printer simply won't do: printer drivers built into Windows may produce device-specific stuff like HP PJL wrapped round the PostScript, or select specific numbered input or output trays, or assume the existence of non-standard resident PostScript fonts; this causes difficulties when printing on a different PostScript printer.

  For your convenience, links are provided here to Adobe Color PostScript Printer Drivers on the official Adobe download site. The driver is installed using its own executable, rather than the Add Printer facility, but otherwise integrates into the system in the usual way.

  The following steps have to be performed as an administrator, so for Windows NT/XP/2000 you should switch to an account with administrator privileges first, or use the RunAs facility. (If you always use your machine in administrator mode, then think again).

  Download Adobe's self-installing executable PostScript driver, universal installer version 1.0.6 or later, for Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP. If you want to browse for a particular version or language, look in the Adobe printerdrivers directory. A good place to store the executable temporarily is in your Desktop folder, though anywhere will do. For the Firefox browser, Desktop seems to be the default place.

  Right click and Save this Generic Colour PostScript PPD file: Take care if using Internet Explorer as this may add a spurious .txt extension to the saved file name!

  Having downloaded these files, double-click the self-installing executable icon to install the Adobe PostScript driver. In the install dialogue, choose Local Printer. Choose an output port of FILE if the output is to be written to disk by default. Choose a printer model of Generic Colour PostScript which is derived from the downloaded PPD file. If you are not offered this as a choice, then you will need use the Browse button to find the downloaded PPD file. For Windows XP your Desktop directory is usually at C:\Documents and Settings\username\Desktop, where username is your account name. When prompted to configure the printer, you can choose a default Paper size of A4. That's it.

• If you use a device-specific printer driver or PPD file, such as for a Tektronix printer, and not the generic one above, then options may be set (explicitly or implicitly) when you prepare the file, such as output medium and print quality, that may well override any options you later use when submitting the file for printing. A specific Tektronix 850DP PPD file is available here, if you really want it, and other manufacturers may have specific PPD files too. But you are strongly recommended to use the generic PPD file of the previous paragraph so that you retain full control over media and quality at the time of printing.

• Unix and Linux systems applications usually produce generic PostScript directly and do not need any drivers to download.

Other printing issues

• Adding a printer using LPR on Windows XP for printing to a Linux/Unix print LPD server
• Adding a printer using LPR on Windows Vista / 7 / server for printing to a Linux/Unix print LPD server
• Adding an IPP network printer (untested)