ionw Posted January 14, 2003 Share Posted January 14, 2003 My company is looking at purchasing X.RIP to use on a network of 16 Macintosh stations, printing to an 800ps. I just talked to MacroEnter and they painted me a rosy picture of setting up a direct connected server runing X.rip and then that printer will become available to all my clients, and we will be able to plot directly to the 800ps and generate RTL files to our hearts content. Anyone have experience with this? Quote Link to comment
C. Deel Posted January 14, 2003 Share Posted January 14, 2003 Yes, MacroEnter / Microspot does paint a "rosy picture" of their software. When I first ordered X.RIP, they told me something about how I could process (rip) on my workstations, then spool the prints from a single MacOS 9 machine. Now they say I'll need one of my OSX workstations to rip AND spool all the prints, so I'm a little confused. Note that it IS protected with a hardware key (they shipped me the wrong one; I'm currently waiting for the correct key). So you sort of have to do it the way they say (one machine processing all the plots.) Good luck. Also, if there are any new alternatives to X.RIP, I would love to know. Quote Link to comment
ionw Posted January 15, 2003 Author Share Posted January 15, 2003 Yah, I was aware of the hardware key. Though I was told that there is going to be a true networked version in two to three months. I don't know if that means they will need to sell you multiple licenses, or have a hardware key on one machine for the network. What I could figure outregarding the setup, was this: You have one OSX machine connected via USB to the plotter (this machine can be a dedicated server or a handy workstation) You install the X-RIP on that machine. You make a virtual printer that is tied to the Plotter. On the Clients you use Print Center to connect them to the virtual printer. Having used Microspot's software before, I don't know how much I would plan to use a workstation that is also the print server. Though OS X does manage this better than OS 9. I would love to know about alternatives as well. I used to know of some for OS 9 but they were for Graphic design houses and were considerably more expensive. They also didn't have the ability to make RTL's, a must for us. Has anyone found a way to make RTL's using Gimp-Print? Then we wouldn't need X-RIP at all. Quote Link to comment
Matthew Giampapa Posted January 15, 2003 Share Posted January 15, 2003 AFAIK, a RTL (HP Raster Transfer Language) is basicly what Gimp-Print is creating. Its the .plt (HPGL/2) file that Gimp-Print is incapable of. I suppose the litmus test would be to set up gimp-print to print to a file instead of a port and send that to someone expecting an RTL file. Quote Link to comment
Kevin Posted January 16, 2003 Share Posted January 16, 2003 I just setup GimpPrint a few days ago and it works great so far. Many older HP printer are supported. I do not know if the newer machines are. This is a discussion about GimpPrint on this board: http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=22;t=000081 Quote Link to comment
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