IMPRESSARIO(1) Impressario IMPRESSARIO(1)NAME
Impressario - printing and scanning server environment for SGI systems
DESCRIPTION
Impressario provides a printing and scanning server environment for
Silicon Graphics workstations. Printing and scanning solutions are
provided for driver developers, application programmers and end users.
Printing Environment
The Impressario printing environment is built on top of the AT&T System V
printer spooling system. Model files, filters and printer drivers are
provided to convert a wide variety of file types, including ISO text
files, many different image file formats, and PostScript documents to a
format suitable for both raster printers and PostScript printers. Using
the Impressario host-based PostScript interpreter it is possible to print
PostScript documents to non-PostScript printers with performance that
greatly surpasses most printer-based PostScript interpreters.
Impressario provides support for a wide range of printers, from low cost
color to high speed black and white printers.
The Impressario Developer's Kit contains a battery of solutions for
printer driver developers and application programmers who need to provide
printing from their programs. For driver developers sample source code is
provided for a spooling system model file, printer driver, and graphical
options panel. Specifications are provided for writing Impressario
compliant print filters, drivers and graphical options panels. For
application writers and driver developers, the developer's kit also
contains three printing related libraries. The libraries libspool and
libprintui make it easy to add printing capabilities to any application.
The third library, libpod allows a printer driver to maintain a database
of printer status information and provides applications with a network
transparent API for querying the status of a printer.
Scanning Environment
The Impressario scanning environment is a completely new architecture for
generic scanner support. Impressario scanner application programs and
Impressario scanner drivers run as separate executables in an open
architecture, enabling any Impressario-compatible scanner application to
interact with any Impressario-compatible scanner driver.
gscan(1) is a graphical scanning tool that is an Impressario scanner
application program. As such, it can scan from any Impressario scanner
driver, including special drivers that can scan from any SGI monitor and
even from SGI image files.
New scanners are added to the system using the scanners(1M) tool, which
is accessible through System Manager or via the command line.
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IMPRESSARIO(1) Impressario IMPRESSARIO(1)
For application developers, the API that gscan(1) uses to interact with
scanner drivers is available in libscan(3) as part of the Impressario
Developer's Kit. For scanner driver developers, a scanner driver
development kit is also available as part of the Impressario Developer's
Kit.
General Development Environment
The Impressario developer's kit also contains two libraries of general
interest to software developers. The first library, libstiff, provides an
API for writing and reading streamable TIFF 6.0 compatible image files
for interchange between filters and drivers. The second library, libimp,
provides an API for reading, writing and manipulating SGI Image Format
files. libimp also provides image zooming and a large selection of color
space conversion routines.
NOTE
Please read the release notes for Impressario. They contain the most
recent information about the product. Release notes are provided on-line
and can be read using the grelnotes(1) or relnotes(1) programs, or from
the system Toolchest's Help menu. In addition, the directory
/usr/impressario contains additional information of interest to end users
and developers.
SEE ALSO
General interest: print(1), gscan(1), scanners(1M)
Printing Developers: libspool(3), libpod(3), libprintui(3X)
Scanning Developers: libscan(3), libstiff(3)
General Development: libstiff(3), libimp(3)FILES
/usr/impressario Directory of Impressario specific information,
specifications and example code.
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