Digital BW, The Print

> FWIW, a well respected member of the ink jet community recently
> posted to the Epson List that Conetech are reformulating Piezo inks
> to cure the clogging, message available in the archive. Who knows,
> now that Mac OSX is based on Unix some enterprising programmers might
> team up with users to produce an affordable open RIP which will work
> with any ink set. Exciting times.

I'm asking not stating. Isn't the Epson driver really an affordable RIP
which works with any inkset, provided proper separation curves are applied
to the file?

I guess I'm missing what those of you who are asking for an open system, or
new RIPs, see on the horizon that will alter the landscape dramatically.

As I see it, and I'm hardly an authority, the Piezo driver (RIP) was
revolutionary in the age when the Epson 3000 was their top of the line
printer, which has an inherently coarse dither due to droplet size. But from
what I gather (mostly on this list), the later Epsons are capable of dither
patters at least as fine as Piezo. Let's call it equal-but-different? They
seem to "artifact" differently, but by and large at similar viewing
distances, they show equal overall "quality".

In this perspective I see us as already having an open system, which is
already being exploited by the likes of Lyson, Spectratones, Brandon, Wolf,
and perhaps most prodigiously, Roark. My sense is that the next technology
that gets applied to current inks and printers will be but one one way the
landscape will alter, but the spectrum includes: A) people putting the sweat
into working with the prevailing open RIP (Epson driver) through innovative
workflows, B) further refinements of the prevailing Cone alternative
(PiezoBW, which is periodically updated), C) new printers with different
heads and/or transport mechanisms, D) other third party add-on RIPS and
drivers, E) new inks.

My personal feeling is that A, B, and D, will prove the most cost effective
and immediate of the five, E holds the most long-term promise, and all five
of these factors need to be executed in conjunction with the others, which
takes time.

Todd