large output when printing postscript on linux

[ChristophLeser]

I switched to jasperreports 3.7.3 and java 6 for my reporting on linux (RedHat EL5).

I followed the recommedation in the recent ultimate guide and installed a font extension for the free 'liberation' font used in my reports.

 

All works fine, the font gets embedded in the pdf, and the print output looks nice as you would expect from jasperreports.

But printing is slow now. I suspect, that this is caused by the high output volume generated, i.e. 1.5 MB for a one page order confirmation.

Probably because the font is not a 'device font', i.e. a font that is embedded in the printer. So every character will be represented by a set of lines and curves.

My question to this forum:

 

Is it at all possible to use printer 'device fonts' with jasperreports? If the printers ppd file indicates that the printer has -say- a TimesNewRoman font, and if I design my reports to use only TimesNewRoman, would in this case jasperreports/jre recognize this and send the code points for the characters instead of drawing them explicitely thus reducing the output volume considerably.

And to enhance my understanding: this decission to use or not to use a device font is done by java printing code or is done by jasper reports?

 

Thanks

[ChristophLeser]

I found no solution for this problem.

I did some test with a kyocera fs3900dn printer, which you may find interesting:

1. When I export the jasperreports result to pdf and print this pdf with linux lpr, the amount of data sent to the printer is only half of what gets sent when I directly export to the printer.

I have no idea how to interpret this. It seems that ghostscript generates postscript output that is more compact than the postscript generated by java.printing.

2. When I use Adobe Acroreader on windows to print the generated pdf, printing is much faster, although the output volume is higher than on linux. But the windows driver generates PCL-XL code, which prints faster than the postscript generated by CUPS ( the printing system on RHEL5). Maybe I can get hold of a cups driver that is able to generate PCL 6e ( or PCL XL ).