A Whole New Postscript.(Adobe Systems's PostScript 3 page-description language)(Company Business and Marketing)

One technology to watch in 1998 is Adobe's PostScript 3 page-description language. PostScript has long been as essential as oxygen for Apple Macintosh printers and for commercial printing and high-end publishing shops, but it has generally been perceived as pricey and unnecessarily complex for the everyday printing needs of individual PC users. But PostScript 3 introduces some enhancements that business users in complex or distributed-printing environments will appreciate.

First, PostScript 3 incorporates support for Adobe Acrobat portable document format (PDF) files. This provides extensive control over the formatting and appearance of documents across multiple platforms. PDF files are becoming increasingly popular for the documentation and distribution of information over the Internet and intranets; PostScript 3 can print PDF files directly, ensuring the highest possible degree of fidelity with the original document.

For years, PostScript has been prized for its resolution independence--the ability to print the same file on a 600-dpi desktop printer or on a 2,400-dpi imagesetter and take advantage of the top resolution of each. PostScript 3 improves on this capability by automatically recognizing graphics, text, gray scale, color photos, and gradient fills, then optimizing the processing for each of these components.

PostScript 3 also boasts an expanded font set. Its 136 built-in fonts include those packaged with Windows 3.1, 95, and NT as well as the Mac OS and Microsoft Office, which reduces the need for the time-consuming process of downloading fonts for these commonly used operating systems and applications.

Finally, like the Adobe PrintGear devices described below, PostScript 3 printers are Web-ready and offer features such as "pull" printing, in which a Web address or URL is sent to the printer so the device can access that site to print the pages it finds there.